Prime86...The rebuild.

[Prime86]

Hey Guys

So after owning my car now for over 7 years doing events and basically just enjoyed it when ever I get the chance, I've made the decision to start rebuilding it. Over the years the cars has changed interior wise, some exterior changes but for most part the drive line and the exterior has always remained the same as I like the overall look of the car. I will do the rebuild in stages as I would like to still use the car and it will be good to see the differences as I go as I'm more focused on the driveline and interior.

My car is very much track or circuit orientated already so I will be simply rebuilding many components and changing things around to get some more speed out of it. So my goal is to keep the original drive line of the car, 4age, T50 and T series diff disc to disc and play with them to extract more speed and better lap times hopefully at our local track. Yes I know an engine conversion is the easiest/cheaper way to go and I did think of doing a Beams engine swap as I only want it to remain N/A however I want to keep it 4age powered to keep the theme of the car going.

I thought it would be great to put what I'm doing up for you guys. I'm starting with the driveline going though the diff, then gearbox and finally the engine with all associated parts. I'm a bit slow to get this up here as I have already done the rear end so I will back track a bit and post what I have done so you guys can see the progress of the whole car.

I wasn't exactly sure what the car had in it so I decided to remove the diff first, strip it down and find out the condition for myself. This is a pic of the car in my shed and how it sat for 7 or so months in pieces as I got around to doing work on it, sourcing parts and working out what I needed to get the most out of the driveline. By far this was the hardest part of the rebuild as I have to know engine specs, rpm etc to work out the gearing so I would achieve what I'm after. I did a lot of research on gearbox's, diff's and engine combinations all that are within my budget as we all do...Lol.

[nastylilweed]

Looking forward to seeing this develop!!! Should be radness.

Track fun when it's done!

[Prime86]

Haha thanks Joe! Hopefully we can both get up to Barbs for a bit of fun.

As I get the time I will keep sorting through my pics I have and throw them up here with a run down of what I've done and the progress so far.

[Prime86]

I took the diff housing to work and throw it in our acid tank to clean it all up along with my gearbox cross member. I also stripped the gears out of the diff hat along with the 2way centre and cleaned them all up, I wasn't happy with the diff centre housing so it got a wet blast to remove all excess scale etc. Here is how the housing came up after I painted it with the gearbox cross member.

[Prime86]

So before I started to reassemble the car I checked all the bushes in the four link, panhard and shocks, also checked the brake calipers etc out. I found the lower shock bushes were shot, panhard bushes were flogged but apart from that everything looked to be ok, so I brought new items to fit. At the same time I decided to fit new rear slotted rotors as they would go well with the Project MU N1 pads I run so everything was new and I would be happy with the rear end. I also painted all the disc backing plates and basically just gave everything a real good cleanup. I reassembled the car, overall was pretty happy with the way it all turned out. I found the 4:77's made a big difference to how the motor pulled up through the rev range and it had more punch out of comers etc. Here's some pics of the rear end completed.

[Mirko]

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

[Prime86]

I stripped the 2 way centre, inspecting the clutches and the housing but it was in good condition so I'm guessing it wasn't long installed before I brought the car. I cleaned up the marks in the housing where the clutches had been working and reassembled it. I brought myself a 4:77 gear kit along with, bearings, axle seals, axle bearings and a Weir Performance solid pinion spacer kit. So I fitted the axle bearings, cleaned up and painted the axles ready to be fitted but I knew the gears were going to be a pain to setup in the housing with the new solid spacer kit. I decided to give the diff to a guy I know to setup it all up as he had different pinion spacers and a pinion slip bearing to make it easy and for $200 it wasn't worth the hassle and running around. Here are the bits and the assembled diff ready to go back in.

[Prime86]

So I started by removing the whole diff assembly as I didn't just want to rebuild the centre but I wanted to clean the housing up and check it out. I was happy to see a TRD 2way sitting in the diff housng with 4:33 ratio that looked to be in good conditon despite what the housing actually looked like. I found the drivers side axle bearing looked very average so was happy that I pulled it out when I did to tidy it all up.

[Konakid]

Very thorough, nice!

[nastylilweed]

What rotors are they and where did you get them? Mine needs a new set of rotors and pads...

PS. jealous of your 4.77's lol