Tranny Swap, !!Update May 19th, 2011!! Options

[KAOS]

Well long story short, my clutch seems to be toast and because my 3rd gear always grinds a bit while shifting up I've decided to swap out the tranny until I can afford a proper 3SGTE swap...
... got a sweet hook up from another member on this site for a S54 w/ Exedy Performance Clutch kit for a great price. (Thanks again! You know who you are )

WALKER is always down for tearing apart a Celica; so of course, he's helping with this project too when he can... thanks Buddy!
The new tranny & clutch haven't arrived yet, but should be here early next week I'm hoping.
I decided to take a few pictures of the steps we've done, simply for my documentation.
The sad thing about WALKER & I is that we like to get distracted with other modifications while we're trying to do something else entirely different. (eg. the polished head and new gaskets that we did when we were trying to replace the timing belt/water pump, LOL)
So here are some pics:

I wish I would have taken some BEFORE and AFTER pictures of my garage, because it was such a mess that you wouldn't even think it was the same garage in this pic:


Then WALKER & I were able to back my car down the driveway onto the street, and with my wife driving; push it backwards into my garage (she's heavy... the car, not my wife ).
We then proceeded to lift the car up and stabilize it on jack stands and pull off the front wheels... not exactly in that order


Then Dave removed the battery:


Here's a shot of the projector build and Wolfies clear 94-95 turn signal lenses (which definately need to be redone because they're still too dark, not enough chrome inside):


The projectors have an angel eye LED ring around the projector housing as well... these are special projectors (WALKER might be able to help with what Lexus they're off of...) that have an adjustable bulkhead, so I could have my high beams and low in the same spot... making room for mesh coverings for the high beam spots...
The high beams are also custom clears using the clear lenses from Remy (I think... its been so long now, I can't remember who they came from)

All jacked up and ready to go, complete shot of the headlights/turns:


This is the part of the story that we got a bit distracted... I wanted to see what the car would look like with no fenders... so off came the front bumper and the fenders:


Then while searching through all the spare parts in my garage, I wanted to see what different fenders would look like, and maybe with some side-skirts:

ST205 Fenders, with the clear repeaters wired and installed...





The fitment of the skirts was not bad, especially for $100 replicas... lol.
So after we were done messing around with the new body panels, we got to work draining the tranny fluid. I had recently replaced the tranny fluid maybe 1000KMS ago... and this is what it looks like today:



Its evident that my 3rd gear grinding is a bit worse than I was led to believe... also, when the clutch went I had to brute force the shifting in order to get it home... I'm sure that didn't help the gears at all... Not my proudest moment...

Here's a shot of me playing in the fluid with a metal magnet wand...




Anyways, there will be more pics as the project progresses, it was late at this point, so we just shut er down. I'm not sure if this thread should be in the Multimedia Section, because its not really a "How To" or anything... but feel free to move it if you like mods...
ENJOY!

This post has been edited by KAOS: May 19, 2011 - 5:00 PM

[KAOS]

--------- UPDATE -------------

... finally.

Managed to get a bunch of CelicaTech guys out to my place on the 15th for some much needed "Garage Meet" time.
Over the past few weeks in my spare time, I've managed to get the axels off, and the suspension in the front dissassembled and ready for an upgrade all on my own... but I figured I would need a hand from someone so I called out the 403 CelicaTech.com team... LOL.

When WALKER showed up on Sunday morning, we got right to work on the rear suspension. Jacking up the rear onto jackstands and removing the GT-Four rear strut bar, dropping the springs/struts, dropping the gas tank, and finally fishing out the rear sway bar...
... that thing is a lot "flimsier" than I originally thought. Compare to the ST bar anyway...

Then ChrisD arrived (from CelicaTech) and with the 3 of us working with the car a foot off the ground, managed to get the sway bar in and bolted back up to the chassis.

When all the guys arrived we had some burgers & beers (drinks courtesy of sodap0p @ CelicaTech) - and with an arsenal of about 8 guys we dropped the tranny, actually only Steve (sodap0p) seemed to do any grunt work while ChrisD directed/guided from above. ZenAutoworks (Sean) swapped out a couple steering wheels for us (installed my 7th Gen, and installed Steve's TRD wheel into his ST-205. Everyone else worked on installing the new rear suspension.

The street outside my house was a beautiful sight, There were two ST185's, 2 ST205's, 1 FD, and my minivan... ok so the minivan wasn't so nice to look at

On to the pics:

Sean (ZenAutoworks) working on Steve's (sodap0p @ CelicaTech) TRD (Nardi) steering wheel



Here's my new wheel, got it all bolted up and now just need to wire up the cruise module:



ChrisD directing Steve from above (bit of an easter egg in this picture too, the Cusco Pillowball mounts for the new suspension set up. ):


The tranny is down, but not quite out:


Trying to pry open the tranny case and seperate it from the engine block


Finally got everything off and seperated, and found the culprit:





Kind of proud of myself, but don't really know why...

Here's the flywheel; little bit of scortching on it, but not bad. Sent it away to be resurfaced...


Here is the chasm that remains...




Here's a sneak peek at the 2nd biggest accomplishment of the garage meet:



This post has been edited by KAOS: May 16, 2011 - 11:34 AM