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by Christopher Douglas |
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Now that you have the Bellhousing prepared, you need to install the two flywheel bolts you took out and the clutch and pressure plate. You need to have a clutch alignment tool to do this. They are very cheap and looks like the input shaft of your tranny but make out of plastic. Bolt the pressure plate to the flywheel in a cross pattern a little at a time so it exerts pressure evenly. if you have a new flywheel, you need to install the dowels that came with it for pressure plate alignment. There was also a note with the flywheel to use the enclosed bolts of you have the FMS HD clutch kit, so i did.
Now its time to bolt the transmission up. Make sure to lighty lubricate the throwout bearing and the input shaft. Mike D'ELena recommended using Super Teflon grease but its hard to find so I used high temp bearing grease. Remember any extra that gets flung or melted off will end up on your clutch and ruin it. BIG NOTE: You will find the stocu will find the stock transmission to bellhousing bolts are not the correct size anymore. You'll need to find a bolt that fits it and go to the hardware store and get 4. Its very handy to have a friend present for this too. If you are not fortunate enough to have a lift and a transmission jack (like me), use a floor jack to get it in position and just keep trying to slide it in.
The rest of the procedure is just the reverse of how you got it out of there. Please note that with the rebuilt transmission that the output shaft bushing was replaced and your driveshaft will have to be tapped in with a rubber mallet. Make sure to put some tranny fluid on the driveshaft yoke first. The last step is to re-install the shifter. Before doing that, put in the 2 3/4 quarts of oil through the place where the shifter mounts. ANOTHER BIG NOTE: Once you get it all put together, you will find that your passenger side O2 sensor does not have room to mount. The only two ways to fix this are to use a blow torch to cut away the lip of the bellhousing in the way (which makes it no longer NHRA legal) or move the O2 mounting hole. I opted for the latter. I couldn't find a muffler shop to do this so I did it myself. I drilled a hole in the H-pipe about 2 inches lower down and welded on a 3/4" fine thread nut that cost $.65. I had to cut the nut in half with a air saw so it would would be the same thickness as the original mount. I was told by Jose that there is a shop in Lewisville that will do it for $30. I forgot the name of the shop so email Jose about that. The shifter installation is very straight forward. The shifter has a shaft protruding from the bottom that has a spherical end. This fits into a plastic "top hat" shaped busing that fits into a hole in the transmission linkage. To install, clean the mounting area off and apply RTV. Not a whole lot is required. use the bolts that came with your shifter and bolt the shifter to the top housing. The transmission is aluminum so be careful in torquing this down. You really don't want to strip those bolt holes out. Here is a comparison pic between the stock shifter (left) and the Pro 5.0 (right) and it mounted in the car.
It is recommended that if you use a HD clutch to install a adjustable clutch quadrant also. See my article How to Install A Forte Adjustable Clutch Quadrant. The results of all this were very pleasing. It shifts much smoother than it ever did before and the Pro 5.0 is much better than the Hurst Comp Plus shifter I had. It's about a billion times better than stock. If you have any questions on this, please email me and I'll try to help try to help out. - Chris |
