Prime86...The rebuild.

[Mirko]

What did u paint the diff with what type of paint?

[Prime86]

I painted the diff housing and components gloss black enamel with a spray gun.

[joeschmo_57]

Awesome work. Looks new!

[Prime86]

So while the car was in pieces I fitted a fiber bonnet and removed all the aircon which was still in the car. After having the car out of action for so long I couldn't wait to get back into it and go for a run, I took ages cleaning the car up again. Afterwards I took it of a few runs in the hills to make sure I was happy with the diff etc, I decided to take it out on a cruise with a local car club. A local photographer at one of the meet points got a few photo's and was very interested in the car so we got talking about it. Later he asked if he could take some pic's up around where I live so we organized a date and got the car out for so pics, here is one of the images he took of the car when finished.

[Stej]

Looking really good Brad. Have ya put the other motor in yet?

[gaspal]

Looking good mate! Probly my favourite notchback in WA. keep looking after her

[Prime86]

Thanks Steve. Nah mate the spare motor is in bits, I'm pretty much starting from scratch rebuilding it.

I will throw up some pics of it and where the motors at now.

[Prime86]

Wow thanks for the compliment. Will do mate it's getting plenty of love at the moment, we will have to organise getting the cars together again some time.

[Prime86]

After the photo's Yuuhi San's took of the car were put up I was contacted by Wei around 2 weeks later via Yuuhi San. Wei is a photographer also and as it turns out he loves AE86's so he wanted to know more about the car. He explained he was coming over from Singapore in a weeks time to take pic's of 3 other Perth based cars and asked if I was interested in meeting up for more pics, I thought it would be a good idea so we set it up. I was stoked to see around 2 months later that an article was made about my car on 9tro magazine an Asian based magazine as there feature. I was really happy with it and couldn't thank the guys enough for their efforts, it's great just to have some nice pic's of the car. It would have been great if the car was finished with the new engine etc but I couldn't pass up the opportunity.

[Prime86]

Now the rear end of the car is done I'm moving onto the gearbox. I have done lots of research on T50 gearboxes and what is available out there as far as gear kits and the ratio's. As I said in an earlier post I have worked out what I need so I know the engine combo I'm going to use and the gearbox ratio's.

Basically there isn't a lot available, you either go for the TRD gear kit that changes 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th ratio's but 4th will always be 1:1 so 5th is an over drive. I approached Albins and they were very helpful as far as they will custom make a gear kit to pretty much any ratio you want with in reason but the price is higher than the TRD Kit around $2800. Also another advantage of running an Albins kit they can make 1st and 3rd gear slightly wider to increase the strength of the gears that commonly fail. Albins use a process that you send them the internals of your gearbox, they then grind the gears off so your left with just a hub on your main shaft, a gear is then pressed onto the hub then welded in place. Now I thought this sounded a bit dodgy but I have only heard good things and they have a very good name. The one thing I wasn't happy about is having an overdrive in the gearbox, that maybe great for tarmac rally cars or road going cars but at the track I think it's better to have a 1:1 on 5th so the gear ratio's can be a lot closer so you gain the maximum advantage from the gearbox. After discussing this with Albins they were happy to change the shift pattern to what is called a dogleg and use 4th gear on the main shaft as 5th by repositioning the selector forks, this is an awesome idea and would work very well for someone doing rally or circuit racing. This would allow a very tall 1st gear and all the other gears very close together and you could use a 4.77 diff ratio rather than using a 5:3 ratio hence why I fitted 4.77's in my car as this is the direction I'm going in.

After all the research I did and all the different combinations of gear ratio's and shift patterns to achieve the 1:1 on 5th there was one problem that always was in the back of my mind. After having trouble myself and speaking to some local rally guys it seemed normal to have problems with the syncro's, no matter how good the gears or gearbox was you would be stripping it to change them frequently. I don't really want to be stripping the box all the time to simply replace synocro's and some are pretty pricey also.

The other option is to move away from a helical gearbox and onto a dogbox with no syncro's and are all 1:1 on 5th with the dogleg arrangement. There are about 3 company's that make T50 dogbox's PAR, Houseman and Quaife but they are very rare and pretty much never come up as most people just put a W58 gearbox or something like that in the car instead because of the cost involved in buying a dogbox.

While I was making up my mind and thought I would just go with the Albins gearbox because it's made in the east and easy to get parts for this gearbox came up.

I have a T50 gearbox fitted with a Quaife QKE4E gear kit that is straight cut all the way and the ratio's are as follows:
1st 2.347 (Tall first gear option)
2nd 1.733
3rd 1.379
4th 1.144
5th 1.000

After I brought the gearbox it was stripped down to inspected the internals and replaced what needed replacing then it was built back up again. It really is a great little gearbox and a lot of work has gone into it.
Here is a pic of the insides of the Quaife gearbox before it was rebuilt for the guys that may have not seen a gearbox like this before: