Transaxle Refresh - Ring Gear

So progress is (as always with this project) slow. Currently I have a grand total 2 trans-axles, and had 0 freewheeling hubs, and therefore 0 functional transmissions. I got a new/used freewheeling hub but need to get the tools made.

Amazingly it turns out one of my friends for high school actually has taken up machining fairly recently and was more than happy to help me make the freewheeling assembly/installation tool for the cost of material and a 6-pack. Score!

The teeth of the tool fit perfectly in the teeth of freewheel cup. I haven't yet assembled the freewheeling hub but it seems like it will do exactly what it's supposed to. Ignore my thumb in front of the camera...

However now the other problem is the fact the old trans-axle sounds like a maraca with all the plungers, springs, and roller bearings bounding around inside it from when the freewheeling hub blew up. From that explosion the teeth of the cup also appear damaged. No way I'll get it all that crap out, not to mention if I did there is likely damage to the internal gears that may become problematic later. So that transmission is out.

The other transmission however didn't come with a freewheeling hub, I've solved that problem, but there is still an issue with it. Rust on the ring gear.

This is the worst of it.

Well the ring gear on the sploded' transmission is fine, rust free...

However simply swapping them isn't really doable. At least not by me in my tiny garage with cheap tools. The lash would be all out of whack plus the ring and pinion are lapped together from the factory, so swapping the ring would mean disassembling the ENTIRE transmission; which from exploded drawings I've seen, and the pressed construction of the shafts, would be literally killing that transmission. So that plan is out.

Well the only solution then is to take the rust off the ring gear and remove the minimum amount of metal so the gears still mesh. So the process is mask off all but 7-8 teeth, brake-clean, wipe down, 180 grit, 320 grit, 400 grit emery cloth with the shop-vac running. Once happy the rust is as good as it's going to get, brake-clean again, then carefully apply gun-blue to the cleaned teeth for 1-3 minutes, wipe off, brake-clean, then apply WD-40, rotate to the next 7-8 teeth.

Here's a finished section. You can still some pitting on the teeth but to get that out I'd need to completely destroy the teeth, so I stopped the rust from getting worse and got the loose rust out of the trans case so it didn't wear off and become grit to further destroy other things in the transmission.

When the whole ring gear is done I'll clean it even more with some Q-tips, WD-40, and install the freewheeling hub and reassemble the two halves of the transmission. Still to come...

Freewheeling Hub

Since my last post things have gone from positive, to absolute despair, back to positive in about the span of a week. Three months since my last update so I'll give you the full update:

I've been busier than ever and the engine still sits where it landed in the last post. I did get the pilot bushing out.

I also elected to take apart the transaxle to check the seals because a tiny pool of gear oil was appearing underneath it sitting on the floor...

This is where the really bad news comes in. I suppose in some respects it's good news because I caught it now, not when everything was back in the car. As you know if you've been reading this blog these cars came with a freewheeling hub, a remnant of the two-stroke power-plants that came in the earlier Sonett II's. The generally accepted way to best modify the transaxle is to neuter this freewheeling hub, effectively locking it in the "engaged" position. Remove moving parts -> reliability/strength.

Well this transaxle that was in the parts car had been previously neutered, the process is adding a spacer to the input shaft to lock the the hub in the engaged position.

The critical part there is locking the hub. Well whoever neutered this transaxle REMOVED the hub.

The fact this is wrong should be pretty obvious to anyone confident enough to take a transaxle apart. Without the hub the input shaft becomes the proverbial hotdog down the hallway bouncing around in the cup with nothing centering or stabilizing it, plus there's no way for that shaft to drive anything. Plus they removed the small needle bearing at the end of the input shaft... for some reason. This is all bad. Really bad. Because the problem with my previous transaxle was... the freewheeling hub exploded.

Far right two holes is what it SHOULD look like... catastrophic failure.

So now I have 2 transaxles and no freewheeling hubs. 

The hub was never a "replacement" part, so there are no true spares they're one-to-one with transmissions. So nobody ever re-manufactured them. Speaking to Mark Ashcraft (http://markashcraft.com/) on the phone he had some thoughts on where to maybe get one; but even if we can it's not a simple fix.

The hub is a bunch of roller bearings with springs behind them arranged in a circle, so without compression they go shooting out. So installation requires a special tool of which probably only one still exists (Subrew has it) but he's in Oregon and I'm in North Carolina, and he's not gonna loan me a tool that is essential to his restoration business (don't even remotely blame him for that).

I spoke to Mark on Monday (3/12) at lunch time. Amazingly he has already come up with and mailed out a new hub for me, along with the dimensions and specifications to make the SAAB designed tool to assemble and install it. It's fantastic to have someone with the connections with such a weird rare car.

He also seems to be the only one who still has pilot bushings for the V4 engine...
Removing the pilot bushing with the proper tools is weirdly satisfying.

This new discovery seems to be the actual reason that my car drove about 100ft then wouldn't move, not the flywheel not actually being attached to the motor. The issue wasn't gear selection or clutch engagement but the input and output shafts weren't actually connected. I'm still gonna fix that stuff but it's not the main issue.

So upon closer inspection this little engagement fork (I don't have a better name for this thing) was the entirety of what was connecting the input shaft to the drive shaft of the transaxle.



That's 5 tiny little teeth on each side of the T making 10 total, the V4 doesn't make a ton of power, but more than enough to destroy those tiny teeth on both the fork and the cup that it mates to. Which you can actually see in the picture, the teeth are bent over from where they should be straight out.



So that transaxle is done for, not even mentioning the rust on the ring gear. The good news is all that stuff is OK on the first transaxle, it's just missing it's freewheeling hub.
So when the freewheeling hub arrives I'm going to have that assembly tool made and get my  first transaxle back together and try to get the drivetrain back in the car. I do need to double and triple check that there is no damage to the gears in that transaxle from the exploded freewheeling hub, also verify there are no more little roller bearings bouncing around inside the case.

There is still some stuff I need to do to prepare for that. Clean up the engine bay, reroute the battery cable, maybe the fuel line; but the project should hopefully continue again.

Engine Out

It's been over a year and a half since my last post on this blog but I'm finally back to working on the Sonett.

Obviously the last update there was a knocking on start-up/idle. I don't know if I ever actually wrote it down but I suspected the issue was the fly-wheel/clutch backing off the engine. The sound seemed to be coming from the bell-housing, not the engine.

Nicholas Byrne suggested last time I had the engine out to just disconnect the lower control arm to swing the half-shafts out to make removing the trans-axle easier. This was an excellent idea, even more so now in hindsight that I realize all I had to remove were the sway bars, and not actually the entire lower control arm... Oh well.



Once all the engine stuff is disconnected you have to make sure the linkage is off the back of the trans-axle as well as disconnecting the trans-mount... which in the Sonett is a single 5/8" bolt, well on my car it is anyways after I re-tapped the threads there to something usable... Guess since it sits on the pan that's probably fine.


Remove the tapered pin holding the interior linkage to the stub off the trans-axle. Don't break it! They should be really greased up and just pressed in, so it should sort-of just pop right out.



Another trick I've learned pulling this engine so many times is to remove three of the four steering rack bolts, and loosen the fourth, the you can pivot the rack so the hump for the linkage clears easier and you can lift the oil pan to clear the front frame brace.



Now just try not to forget to disconnect the exhaust and the P-clip that you added to hold the battery cable... Then remove the engine.



And out! The whole process start to finish took about 5 hours. We sort of cheated because I had already disconnected the alternator, belts, radiator, and other stuff that had to be removed to get the engine out before-hand.



Apparently while the starter is only joined to the trans-axle when you try to remove the transaxle with it attached, it pinches the oil pan and won't come off. That puzzled us for way longer than it should have.

Finally the trans-axle was off and I could get a good look at the clutch and fly-wheel:

Validation! It's hard to tell in the picture but 5/6 weren't actually touching the mounting face of the fly-wheel. One is pretty obviously out about 3/16", and the rest were literally finger loose. I took out the one tight one with a wrench in the time it took my friend to take out the other 5 with his hand...

But that would definitely cause the problem I was having. So this was a fantastic relief to see an obvious problem and have a solution ready to go.

The engine is on the stand ready to be cleaned up, I'll detail the engine-bay and clean everything there up. Then replace the bolts, friction plate, carrier bearing, and bushing.

Long Time Gone & New Things to Come...

I know every time I post I'm all upbeat about how I've finally got time to start working on the car again and I've got the problems figured out, and blah blah blah. Well I'm a full time engineering student, and during the summer I work full-time so a good bit of the time that just works out to the poor Sonett getting the shaft. Hopefully though this summer I'll have some time after work to get the engine back out, figure out my issues and get that damn thing road worthy!

My current DD (An 85 Fiero GT abomination) got a little to much attention in recent months, damn squeaky wheel gets the grease and boy oh boy does that mother squeak. Well I finally decided enough is enough and I'm selling the thing. I'm gonna fix it's few little foibles to make a sale and it's gone. If anyone wants to buy an 85/86 Fiero Fastback V6 with a 5-speed, with power everything; that currently backfires like it's going out of style, $3000 and it's yours... SOLD

But a new challenger approaches... Very soon I am flying out to Denver from Raleigh to purchase my next DD/Project (have you not learned yet that I'm a glutton for punishment?) and drive it back (and I'm stupid). What on earth could be next? Well I'm not gonna tell just yet, but here's a hint: it's definitely Swedish. I'll post some more info on the car after I actually pick it up and get some miles under our belt.

3,000+ Miles in a car I've never seen in person, only heard run in grainy videos and only spoken to the owner over the phone; what could go wrong?

Finally (Hopefully) getting back to work

This seems to be a recurring trend... I work on the car for a week or two relentlessly, hit some kind of giant set-back and lose interest in the project/run out of money/don't have the time to work on it. Well hopefully in the next couple of weeks that will change.

It's been long enough (almost 9 months) since I last really worked on the car. The only thing that has really changed since my last post is the SAAB has moved. I got out of my buddy's shop cause, well frankly they wanted me out; can't say I blame them. Now the SAAB has it's own storage unit, tucked in tight to a 10'x15' space, yes it fits, yes just barely. The Sonett with the nose on measures like 14' 6" or something long and about 6' wide. So the unit contains the car, a couple of shelves full of parts, and my tools.

The other thing that has changed is I may have a lead on what caused the god-awful banging last time I tried to start the car, at least I hope this is the case. The Taunus V4 is a Ford motor, Ford uses stretch-to-spec bolts for attaching the flywheel. If that makes no sense let me break it down how I understand it: everybody knows certain things should be always to torqued only a very specific amount. Torque it too little it won't do what it's supposed to, torque it too much and you'll break the bolt or maybe worse, warp the part you're bolting. The bolts used for the flywheel (Ford part #D4FZ-6379A) and ones like them need to be torqued multiple times to stretch the alloy. This process intentionally warps the threads, ever so slightly so the thread grabs that much better; BUT it makes it so the bolts CANNOT be reused. So take one guess what I did when I put the flywheel back on... yep, I thought I was above these simple rules, plus I didn't use any thread-locker, like a total loser.

So the prevailing theory is that the bolts in the flywheel have either backed out (not so bad) or broken (F**K) , essentially leaving the flywheel bouncing around on the clutch as the motor tries to turn. What lends credence to this theory is that the banging happens at the same time as the clutch problem, the flywheel moving out also explains the sudden lose of clutch use. This seems like it is most likely the problem, and thankfully should be an easy fix. 'Easy' of course being subjective cause it does mean pulling the motor and trans again, but that's way better than pulling the motor, breaking the seals, and hunting down rod knock...

So I bought some new fly-wheel bolts, the nice thing is since ford used those bolts in all kinds of cars there are aftermarket ones out there that don't cost 15$ a bolt, I got a set of six from ARP at summit for like 30 bucks. They sell them as parts for a Pinto, but the Ranger, Mustang, and a handful of others use the same bolts.

So that leaves the issue of timing, and the gas tank. I need to debug my ignition set-up because upon the third or fourth reading of the install guide for my MSD box it may not be wired 100% correct. Once I get that right I suspect it will either fix my timing problem straight up or make setting it a simple distributor rotation away.

The gas tank is a little more interesting issue. My buddy has a spare fuel cell or two lying around, but at the moment we're also building a 71 Datsun 240z to go LeMons racing, and it's going to be getting one of those cells... but we don't know which one. Obviously long-term I'll probably fab' up a new stainless tank based up the two tanks I have if I can get my hands on a decent TIG welder and someone willing to teach me how to use it... or the YouTube. For the foreseeable future though I suspect the Sonett will be drinking out of a 5 gallon gas can.

Update 6/11

It's been a while since I've updated this space so time to bring you guys up to speed.

Since I last posted my repair on the fan failed, so I've removed it from the engine. Better to have no fan than a shrapnel hazard in the engine bay. Plus I would have needed a new belt to turn the fan, and who wants to spend like 5$ on a new belt.

The engine is back in the car, the transmission is obviously mated to it and everything is hooked back up and was driving for a few hours. I feel as if the car is resisting any attempts at finishing this point. After she ran and drove I've discovered I either have a bad alternator or a fairly substantial short. When the battery is reconnected it sparks (obviously a short somewhere) and the starter starts trying to turn over, which after some research is either due to an internal short in the starter solenoid or a by-product of the MSD ignition box being wired the way it is.

After the second test drive the clutch stopped fully depressing, so the car wouldn't go into gear. I determined that problem was a combination of an air-bubble in the lines and a lack of adjustment in the clutch release arm. I fixed the adjustment and re-bled the lines and it seemed to go into gear, but once again fix one problem and at least one more pops up. I crank the engine back on to test my clutch fix and I've got cylinder knock, like the timing is off by 90 degrees or more. That would make sense except for the part where I did timing literally the day before and the engine was purring at the factory recommended 6 degrees before TDC (at cranking). We also noticed that there is a crack in the top of the boot in my Bosch Blue ignition coil, which is then arcing through that crack to the positive terminal. A great thing to have in the engine bay of a carbuerated car: a fire-starter. So with the arcing and the cylinder knock I changed back to the MSD Blaster coil that is recommended with the MSD 6A ignition box. Now on cranking the engine backfires and spits scorched gas up through the top of the carburetor. So I'm 100% sure there is a timing issue of some kind, however I have no idea how it just appeared overnight.

I come back the next day to try to diagnose the timing issue and the whole garage smells like gas. Upon further inspection the gas tank is leaking from a pinhole somewhere, despite the KBS sealer I used early on it in this project. So I removed the tank, with some help to keep it from pouring gas everywhere, drained it and set about removing paint to find the pin-hole that was leaking. Of course it wasn't a single pin-hole, or even a couple pin-holes, there is probably somewhere north of 50 holes in this tank. The KBS coating on the inside is flaking off the sides in huge sheets and the gas obviously got between the coating and the tank surface, rusting holes through and peeling off the seal.

 Fill it with water to check what's leaking...

Like a freaking sieve. Upon removing all the paint from the tank I found dozens and dozens of pinholes, more than half were leaking as bad as this one.

So now I'm three steps backwards when she was so close to being done. I've got the tank from the parts car, and it appears to be free of pin-holes, but it is in very similar condition to the first tank; so full of rust. So I've got a few options.  First I can try to repair the first tank, cut it open, clean out the rust, solder or weld up the pinholes, re-seal it, and then weld it back together. Or I can send that tank off and have it repaired professionally for around $300-$400. Or I can do attempt again using a sealing kit on the parts car's tank. I may try my hand at fixing the first tank because at this point it's basically junk, if that doesn't work I'll probably just send off the second one to be professionally repaired and for it to come back with a warranty.

Hopefully while the tank is being fixed I can diagnose the short and fix it, then when the gas tank is ready I'll fix the timing and that will be it, knock-on-wood.

Engine Fan, Motor In!

So the parts car had an original Ford plastic timing case fan. Those things are rare with all 5 spokes still attached, ones that aren't cracked are basically unheard of. The one on the parts car was dirty and had a single big crack but wasn't missing any pieces so I wanted it for my motor.

Looking all dirty, these fans are goofy because they aren't symmetrical. Removing them is actually pretty easy. Fouir bolts go in the outer holes then use a bearing puller to pop the pulley underneath off the case.

There's the crack, the blade obviously warped under some heat after it cracked but there were no missing pieces of plastic.

So the process I used was fairly simple. I clamped the fan gently in the vice with the cracked blade facing up. Then I used my heat-gun on the "Low" setting to soften the plastic and make it a little more malleable. Used some 220 grit sandpaper to rough up the edges where the plastic was going back together. I then used some plastic epoxy in between the gaps, with the epoxy in place I slowly bent the fan blade back together and taped it in place. Then let the epoxy dry. I used a soldering iron to "weld" the two halves of the fan together in the back. This weld isn't meant to be structural just provide some more surface area for the second coat of epoxy to hold onto. 

Cleaned up and the crack repaired

So with the fan repaired I cleaned up the pulley and bolted it and the fan onto my motor. I do really like the look it has with the red fan, black timing case, and blue valve-covers/block/heads.

So with the engine finally finished it was ready to go back into the car. Quickly during this process I figured out my previous plan of having the trans in first and bolting up the engine in the car wasn't going to work. There's no amount of adjustment in the trans mount that will allow the clutch shaft to properly align in the clutch and flywheel so the bell housing can bolt up to the engine. So I pulled the transmission back out of the car and bolted it up to the engine.

The tricky part then is getting the CV axles back into cups on the side of the trans-axle so that it can actually drive the wheels. I was doing this entirely by myself and that was a terrible horrible pain. The hard part is making sure the spindle caps on the axles aren't knocked off in the process, if you can have a second person manning the axle and telling you how to adjust the engine on the lift. I would also recommend 4 points of lift on the engine instead of 2, a carburetor lift plate would probably be even better than that.

After several hours of struggling with the power-train I finally got everything in, trans linkage hooked up properly, trans-mount bolted up, and engine mounts in their proper holes and torqued down. At this point I realized there was a minor problem, the new fan hits my ignition box where it is currenly mounted but that's an easy fix: relocate the box. Hopefully soon I can get the coolant lines, exhaust, starter, and points hooked back up, then hopefully she'll run and drive again! I also need to bolt back up my new flywheel cover.

Prepping the Engine for Install

So after cleaning the engine, repainting the engine feet, oil pan, and water pump the engine was ready to be all sealed back up.

I cut a new gasket for the oil pan, sealed it on with some RTV gasket maker and put some new bolts in it. Bolted back on the engine feet and water pump. One of the threads in my water pump was gak'd so I needed to re-tap it. Since the threads go all the way through the holes in the water pump I could start at the front and just tapped it all the way through. All the accessories back on the engine I could put it off the stand and hang it to bolt back on the fly-wheel.

The fly-wheel off my car looked like it had been at the bottom of the ocean, there is no cover between the bell housing and the engine so the fly-wheel is just exposed to the road including all the dust, water, mud, and rocks that lie on that road. So the first thing to do was to clean up the flywheel before it went back on the car. Thankfully the clutch surface of the fly-wheel was fairly clean so it just needed to be wiped down with brake cleaner, I could hit the rest of the surfaces with a light wire-wheel since it was so rusty and the surface isn't fragile for operation.

Here are the two fly-wheels I have, the parts car's is on the left, mine on the right.The one that came with my car was lightened, probably shaving a massive 10 or so pounds off the stock format, lending credit to the theory that this motor was kind of sporty once upon a time.

So with the fly-wheel all cleaned up I bolted it back onto the motor and wiped it down with some brake cleaner, then bolted back on the clutch and clutch-plate.

Now that the flywheel and clutch were all cleaned up I'd like them to stay that way, which meant fabricating a plate to bolt onto the trans-axle case and keep the elements out of the bell-housing. So since I had two trans-axles I traced the pattern of the bottom half of the bell-housing onto a sheet of 1/16" steel, cut it out, polished down the edges and drilled holes to bolt it to the bell-housing. 

I painted it black with some engine enamel so it wouldn't rust either.

So I clamped the new plate onto the bell-housing and drilled accompanying holes about a 1/2" deep, then tapped those holes so I could simply bolt on the cover. The cover will have to go on AFTER the engine and trans-axle are attached because the cover goes between the fly-wheel and engine.

I ended up having to re-cut this plate, nearly flat to the bottom of the semi-circle I cut previously to make the fit a little easier, don't really lose any protection but it doesn't interfere with the fly-wheel's rotation.

Transmission In, Engine Cleaning

So with the new (to me) transmission cleaned, rebuilt, and resealed it was ready to go back in the car. Assuming your car's chassis is completely unmodified you hypothetically want to put the engine and transmission in already joined. However my chassis is modified: the front two chassis bars have been cut out, the top because it came like that and honestly you need to for easy removal of the motor, the bottom one because it had been dented severely when the motor was removed by the previous owner so I'll be welding in a new bar. So with those modifications I can slip my transmission and engine together seperately, the trick is to simply set the trans-axle into where it's going to live, but DON'T bolt it in. That gives it that little bit of wiggle and adjustment so that when the engine is ready to join it adjustments can be made and the bell-housing bolts put back in.

Getting the trans in the car is a tricky job, and it's better if you have two sets of hands because you need to rock the trans-axle to either direction to slip in the axles. Gotta' be extra careful to make sure the spindle caps on the axles don't come off at this step and to re-pack the axle cups with bearing grease, don't want them wearing out.

I had to put back on the C-Clip that connects the clutch release arm and slave cylinder

Sitting pretty with everything connected

However my flywheel, clutch, and engine are not ready to go back in the car so for now just the transmission will be alone in the car. The engine is the only thing on this car I hadn't torn down and either rebuilt or at least cleaned, mostly because it hadn't given me any issue. Supposedly the engine had had the cylinders sleeved by the previous owner and I wanted to cleaned the oil pan anyway since the first time I drained the oil it had water foam and slime in it, so I figured it didn't hurt to clean the pan and look in the cylinders.

I was speechless.

The motor looked goddamn brand new

After everything else on this car I expected a horror-show. 

This engine was professionally cleaned, probably vatted and cleaned.

All I did to the interior was to clean out the oil-pickup and clean some of the dirty oil out of the valleys.

I like the Ford blue so I'm gonna try to clean it up and repaint it

I bought a new oil pump ages ago and never installed it so I figured now was as good a time as any

Oil pickup cleaned and the old gasket scrapped off

While the engine is off I figured I would clean the waterpump since when the motor is in the car it's damn near impossible to get tools down there. Also gonna go ahead and clean up the motor mounts. A motor that looks that good inside deserves to look just as good on the outside!

Water-pump cover, water-pump and motor mounts.

Interior of the pan, cleaned of old oil and anything else

Exterior of the pan, I think we can agree it was a little worse for wear.

Feet cleaned of old paint

Water-pump cover all cleaned ready to be repainted

Here's the outside of the motor before cleaning

It's been sitting on this engine stand too long, dust, grime plus everything from inside the car

Motor is almost as gross as I am

Remember kids, if you're gonna gunk your motor cover the carburetor, distributor and the PCV value so you don't get water and gunk inside the block.

I've got to clean the exterior of the motor and figure out if I want to paint it or just leave the paint as is. I think I'm leaning towards repainting it this Ford blue or a very similar color since it matches the steering rack and overflow tank. We'll see though, it may be more trouble than it's worth, but at the same time I'm never gonna get a better chance... decisions decisions...

Also need to clean my flywheel and clutch assembly so they can be bolted back up as well.