DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

If only Nige!

So back on track.

I'm converting the car to use a G50 gearbox and part of this conversion requires a different pedal box, A RHD G50 pedal box was surprisingly (or perhaps not in the current market) difficult to come by but I eventually found one and stripped it down.





The pedals went for powdercoating and the rest for plating, meanwhile new bushes and a master cylinder were ordered, leaving me with a kit of parts...



And all back together as much as I can before fitting to the car as it has to be installed in two halves one from each side of the tunnel.

You do very nice work Mr Miller

Darren65 wrote:You do very nice work Mr Miller

Why thank you Mr Tompkins

So since the base car for this project left the factory with a 4-speed box which has very long gears, I decided I wanted a 5 speed, but to cope with the power it needed to be a G50 Gearbox and those don't fit into the earlier chassis without cutting the torsion tubes which I didn't want to do. So the only other option is to shorten the G50 to allow it the required clearance.

This is done by cutting back the bell housing by 29mm and also shortening the input shaft, unfortunately this requires complete disassembly of the gearbox, so off it went to Mike Bainbridge.

Whilst the box was apart I took the opportunity to replace any worn parts (very few as it turns out) and also to fit a Quaife LSD. My other change was to use the Fifth gear from an '89 Turbo gearbox for lower revs at motorway speeds.

In this picture the G50 is the upper most gearbox, if you compare the picture with the ones in the previous post you can see how the bell housing has been shortened back to the previous rib.

Clever stuff! hows the rest of the project going?

radioboy1 wrote:Clever stuff! hows the rest of the project going?

Nowhere fast unfortunately! I needed the gearbox back to trial fit it and the engine into the body to check clearances and fit the ducktail over the intercooler, rear bumper over the exhaust etc before progressing any further towards paint work.

Fantastic work as ever.....this is going to be one very cool hot rod

29mm off and it is done/
Never realised it was that easy!!

MB can deal with anything!
will be interesting to see how you do the hydraulic clutch if you go that way.

Hydraulic clutch will be as per the later cars, I have changed the pedal box for a later one (see posts earlier in thread) then it's just a matter of running the pipe work front to back.

Because the bell housing now has less room the standard G50 clutch won't fit so a custom flywheel, guide tube and the earlier 3.0 turbo clutch is required as is a custom gearbox mount as neither the original four speed nor the G50 will now line up with the chassis mount points.

Ah...
Bit more to it!
Good stuff though as ever.

Nice stuff Jon

A reminder of the destination for all these parts!

So part of the plan is to convert the car to coilovers, and as part of that I decided to raise the spindles on the front struts (lowers the car but keeps the suspension geometry the same)

So Starting with the original struts



Grind away the weld holding the spindle to the strut



Cut away the brackets for the brake hose and sensor cable



Using a suitable drift move the spindle up the strut the required amount (in this case 19mm is as far as you can go if you want to be able to run 15" wheels)



It would only move a fraction at first so I had to use a press and some heat!



Eventually moving the required 19mm



Next job is to fit the seating ring for the coilover





Once that was welded in place I made up some strengthening fillets





The final job was to add the brackets for the bump steer kit (this allows adjustable positioning of the track rod end to allow the steering arm to remain horizontal when the car is lowered)





So there we are a pair of RSR struts ready for powder coating...



Cheers
Jon

Nice work Jon - quite fancy doing that on mine sometime