Manual Conversion Dramas!

damo03 · 23-11-2005, 10:08 PM

Thought I would share my experience over the last week about the 3spd auto to 5 Speed manual conversion i have done in the xf. I know this is the e-series thread but you guys are very accoustomed to the conversion.

So the story goes: I purchased a donar car for the conversion and last weekend I took my xf up to the farm where a mate has a pit to do the conversion. It was all going well, and only took about 2 hours to get the manual out of the donar car, and about 1 hour to get the auto out of my car.

Then there was the pedal box, which I managed to get out in about 1 and a half hours and put in in the same time, buy dropping the steering, but not taking the dash out so i was stoked!

Then it came time to bolt the manual in the xf. The first step was to bolt manual flywheel onto the crank and this is where the dramas started. The bloody bolts out of my car (the auto) were shorter and fatter than the bolts out of the manual xf. This meant that there was no more I could do untill i could get long, fat bolts to go through the thicker manual flywheel and bolted to the crank.

So that was the end of the weekend, and then on tuesday arvo i planned to purchase the bolts and go to the farm and finish the job.

This opened up a whole can of worms when purchasing these bolts as they were not available in a hi tensile bolt of that size anywhere. The only option was to use a allen key style head, and lathing the head down (as it was way too high, then very carefully torqueing it up to the crank as i had very little purchase on the head with the allen socket as a result of lathing the heads of the bolt.

This seemed to go ok, considering everything, and then it ONLY took 45 min to get the shaft on the gearbox into the flywheel and it was all alligned. After bolting up all the other stuff and checking everything it was time to start the car.

The car seeemed fine but was very rough, and made a scraping noise, and wasnt as fast as i rekined it should be. The scraping noise is due to the big boss on the front uni's scraping the body deadening material which was not on the other car. I attribute this to my car being a fairmont. This is not a big issue as it will wear away and stop scraping over time (hopefully).

The second issue was that driving home from the farm i would lose power and could not go faster than 60 for a fair bit of the trip. This was primarially due to a vacuum line disconnected and retarding the spark cronically!

Also another thing slowing the car down was dragging brakes as the brake and cruise cancel switch on the brake pedal was set out too far and causing the brake to engage.

These things had me thinking, "no worries, just the sort of stuff you sort out as you go along".

The biggest worry is a huge vibration i have in the car when i rev with the clutch in or in gear. The higher it gets (from about 2500rpm) the harsher the vibration esp when driving along. The vibration is soo bad that by 4000rpm the car cannot really rev harder cos its soo bad. This really annoys me as the car really picks up then slows in accelleration cos of this vibration.

I figure that it could be one of these things:

a:harmonic ballancer gone out of wack, and made more known by the heavier flywheel and clutch on the engine. The pulley has quite a wobble in it.

b: power steering pump wobble or bearing gone. This would be easy to fix.

c: The most likely problem and a bugga to fix: Something is stuffed with the clutch / flywheel and I have to pull the gearbox out to find this and fix it up. What a bloody bastard. I will have to pull the flywheel cover off and see if it wobbles when the engine is running.

I can also take the belts off the steering and fan and see what that does, and replace the ballancer, and if it isnt fixed then move onto the gearbox but it looks like many more man hours here to get it perfect! Suggestions are welcome as to where the vibration is from

My advice: Try to get a manual first off if you can and it ALWAYS takes longer than expected, however the better accelleration, speed, economy on highway is great! Also the wheelspin i have never had before in the dry is fantastic!

A tired and greasy Damo

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Damo · 23-11-2005, 10:21 PM

Hmm, why couldn't you use the flywheel bolts from the donar car ? I know in the EA's the Auto and manual bolts are the same. The vibration sounds like either a flywheel bolt isn't tight enough or a presure plate bolt has let go, i had this happen on my EA when i first converted it as one of the presure plate bolts I used was dodgy. Had the same vibration you describe that got worse with revs increasing. Ended up wrecking the clutch by the time i pulled it out. Another thing, I hope you put a spigot bearing in the crank ? I assume it's same deal as e-series.

God luck getting it sorted out.

Psycho Chicken · 23-11-2005, 10:44 PM

It won't be the balancer, the torque converter weighs more than the flywheel when full of fluid.

For god's sake change the flywheel bolts! You've weakened them by putting them in the lathe. Unless you don't like walking, you DON'T want that flywheel coming through the trans tunnel with 3500 RPM behind it.

The vibration will have something to do with the conversion. Most likely flywheel out of balance. Did you change the tail shaft?

The brake switch will have nothing to do with brakes coming on, it just cancels cruise and turns the brake lights on. Unless I don't understand what you're saying?

damo03 · 23-11-2005, 10:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Psycho Chicken

It won't be the balancer, the torque converter weighs more than the flywheel when full of fluid.

For god's sake change the flywheel bolts! You've weakened them by putting them in the lathe. Unless you don't like walking, you DON'T want that flywheel coming through the trans tunnel with 3500 RPM behind it.

The vibration will have something to do with the conversion. Most likely flywheel out of balance. Did you change the tail shaft?

The brake switch will have nothing to do with brakes coming on, it just cancels cruise and turns the brake lights on. Unless I don't understand what you're saying?

How would the shortening of the head weaken the bolts? It was a 10 mm head originally and we lathed it down to 8 or 7.5mm... I cannot remember which... It didn't heat the bolt either so that shouldn't be a problem

I did change the tailshaft with the manual one so that shouldn't be a problem and it didn't vibrate in the donar car.

With the brake, the switches were screwed through the hole and were forcing the brake on slightly. When i unscrewed them a fraction they took the pressure off.

Psycho Chicken · 23-11-2005, 10:57 PM

I would of thought they would heat up a bit. I still wouldn't be using them. Anyway, where did you go looking for bolts?

What parts did you replace when you put it in? Spigot? Throw out bearing?

Ah fair enough, that's a bloody fair effort to adjust the brake switch out that far.

damo03 · 23-11-2005, 11:09 PM

Na, the bolts shoudn't have gotten very warm, but I may have to change them anyway if one of the bolts isn't torqued to the same spec like what damo was saying. It certainly looks that way.

I went to a industrial supplies joint on london drv, bayswater. I could try elsewhere, but the bolts i need are a 7/16th unf (20thread / inch) 32mm deep bolt hi tensile (9-11). All i could get was a 5 hi tensile bolt which i don't think is strong enough, unless i go the allen key route.

I could always ring around if they turn out to be stuffed. apparently it's impossible to get hi tensile bolts in a 9-11 rating on a small diameter thread. Thats what the shop attendant said anyway; maybe he just wanted my business. :S

Damo · 23-11-2005, 11:10 PM

lol, you didn't ansswer my questions, why didn't you use the bolts from the donar car ? It will be either the flywheel or the Presure plate f0 sure.

damo03 · 23-11-2005, 11:21 PM

Sorry mate...I couldn't use the bolts cos of this reason. My car (originally a auto) had short fat bolts, and the donor car had long narrow bolts. So I couldn't use the same bolts as the short ones were half the length of the manual ones and also they wouldn't have got any purchase.

It could be cos of the different build dates of the car and mine isn't efi like the donar car but on gas.

How loose was your bolts to give the vibration and what bolt was it? the flywheel or the clutch plate bolt? And what gave the problem away? Did the flywheel wobble?

Just to give you a better idea, The vibration is present when i gun the car in neutral with the clutch in, and amplified when underload driving. It seems to be coming from the gearbox as well, as when i rev the car from the engine bay it sounds smoother than from in the cabin.

I replaced the spigot bearing, and that's all as the rest seemed fine. The cluthc was like new.

Damo · 23-11-2005, 11:35 PM

by the time i pulled the box out (about 4 days after the vibration developed) one of the presure plate bolts was hanging on by a thread. I could feaal the vibration through the clutch pedal, the whole car vibrated once the revs got up.

damo03 · 24-11-2005, 07:38 AM

Thanks.

I'll see if I can see the clutch plate bolts from the flywheel dust cover, and take it from there. It definatly sounds like i'll have to take the gearbox out again though

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eav8 · 24-11-2005, 08:56 AM

make sure you use some thread lock on the flywheel bolts when you re-do them as they have a nasty habit of undoing themselves otherwise. VPW sell flywheel bolt sets through their website in the sizes you are chasing.

gozza · 24-11-2005, 10:23 AM

yeah use lock tite on your fly wheel
i got my clutch changed on my old honda a few years ago...i let my mate have a drive and he banged it into the gutter while parking......i went to start it and i couldn't put it into gear....got it towed and apparently the flywheel feel off...or moved out of place...
so use locktite

Kenaz · 24-11-2005, 11:22 AM

I don't think locktite is really necessary, just make sure you use the correct bolts and torque them down properly.

24-11-2005, 01:41 PM

gozza, if your flywheel came off by banging into a gutter while parking, they must have used blutack to stick it on ..

gozza · 24-11-2005, 01:59 PM

yeah that or uhu glue

damo03 · 24-11-2005, 06:06 PM

Thanks for the replies. I will have to wait a few weeks before i can take the gearbox apart again and in the meantime i will get the tailshaft checked to make sure it is balanced, but it certainly seems like 1 of the bolts r loose.

I did use loktite on the bolts for the flywheel but not the clutch plate.

Oh well, more fun and games to come!

Damo