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

[96stgreendemon]

mine did the same thing, you can bust your ass trying all of this, i should know i went through no joke 3 breaker bars, 2 of which were snap-on, find someone with an oxy aceteline torch and heat that bastard up till its almost red hot, then just take an impact to it and it comes right off, worked great for me

[KAOS]

So while I was throwing the winter wheels on the trusty ol' minivan, I figured because I had the impact gun hooked up that I should try the 30mm bolt again...

I braced it all up real good with a crow-bar so the axel didn't rotate on me, and left the impact gun (on highest setting) run for a good 30 seconds straight... and viola! - its slowly started to turn and eventually released! YAY!

... the only problem now is; its too damn cold to work on it.

LOL

[njccmd2002]

working lights from HD 1000 wats, they keep me warm

[KAOS]

working lights from HD 1000 wats, they keep me warm

Probly give you a nice healthy tan too...

[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

[ChrisD]

Yep, I'm excellent at "directing" if I do say so myself. Was nice to bang off a whole bunch of stuff relatively easily for a change!

This post has been edited by ChrisD: May 16, 2011 - 9:29 PM

[KAOS]

Got the flywheel back today... looks brand spankin new!















I did notice this however...



The teeth look a little chewed on... so I'm going to take a better look at my starter to see if anything it missing from it.

With this kind of damage, it almost looks like something got in between the clutch and flywheel...



... but there was no scratching on the flywheel when we took it out... so I'm still not sure what to think.

[KAOS]

Update - I really hate myself right now.

Getting distracted and started 7 different projects at once is really coming back to bite me in the @$$.

I'm slowly trying to get back on track and took the week off to get back underneath my car - and slowly start putting it back together.

The rear suspension/brake assembly is finally complete, here are some teaser pics (iphone pics/flash - sorry for $hitty quality):





Had to reassemble the coilovers (I missed washers on the original install), finally installed my Stainless Steel Braided Lines, and Coated the brake calipers RED.

Also, finished the install of the 7th gen steering wheel, w/ retrofited 6gc cruise stalk... didn't snag pics of that however.