Jim's Build Thread

[33fromSD]

Ha I say.... Now my friend owes me $100 and 2 cases of beer

Back story on that...The engine / tranny came assembled from BluePrint engines and since they ran the whole unit I know all the alignment was properly set so I didn't want to remove the tranny/bellhousing to install Mike Forte's bracket for the slave cylinder so I installed the engine and tranny in the car as you know.

In order to install Mike's bracket you have to drill 3/8" holes through the bell housing. Are you cringing yet? I was studying to figure out if I could do it. About that time my friend comes in the garage to check out the 33's progress and asked what I was looking at, and I explained it to him and he basically said "man, you're screwed....at a minimum you're going to have to pull the tranny.". I said nope, I bet I can figure out a way too do it with everything in the car and leave no metal shavings inside the bell housing.

He hates to lose and I love a good challenge so he said "No way, I'll bet you $100 and 2 cases of beer that you'll never do it.".

Okay, so to my lack of admission at the time, I had to do something similar about 2 years back and it's really tough to do but I knew it could be done.

I pulled out the 12" long 1/8", 3/16", 5/16", 1/4" and 3/8" drill bits, as well as the gorilla tape (really sticky stuff, don't try this with normal duct tape). My friend was scratching his head at this point wondering what I was trying to do.

I removed the reverse switch from the side of the tranny so I had a straight shot to the area I needed to drill.

The trick is going slow, but basically you take a 2"x2" piece of gorilla tape, put it inside the bell housing in the area you're going to drill making sure the tape is stuck really well under the hole you're drilling, and then while drilling slow (it's only aluminum so low rpm is fine), as you feel the drill bit coming through the other side, press the gorilla tape around the hole to capture the metal shavings (the majority are pulled out from the outside anyway). Remove the drill bit, repress on the tape all around the hole, and then slowly pull the tape out, and the metal shaving will be stuck to the tape.

Rinse and repeat for every hole size drilled but be sure to use a new piece of tape each time.

20 minutes later, my friend was speechless except to say "sure, you got the holes drill but there has to be metal shaving on the inside", so I pulled out the endoscope I had, and let him explore the inside of bell housing and he just stood up and said "Crap...I'll stop by next week with the money and beer".

Not for the faint of heart, and actually putting on the nuts on the inside of the bellhousing made me more nervous but it beats all the additional time that it would have taken to do this with the tranny off the bell hosing.

so, bracket is installed and I also installed the clevis bracket on the fork handle. This weekend I'll install the slave cylinder and run the line to the mater cylinder.

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