Driveline
My gearbox is a C4 automatic. They are a 3spd box renound for their stength and are nice and small. Fits into a capri perfectly. They can handle anything up to 500hp. The debate for going auto or manual didn't last long.. this car was a street cruiser and weekend dragster, there is no comparison.
An automatic handles torque a lot better, therefore, there are fewer stresses on the engine, driveshaft, motor mounts, xmember, and rear axles. The advantages are numerous. When it comes to the dragstrip, unless it's a clutchless manual nothing will be as consistent or as strong as a properly setup automatic. I also didn't fancy sitting behind a rumbling hot V8 stuck in traffic with my leg halfway on the clutch! If I miss shifting gears that much it's only a small job to convert my shiftkit to a full manual shift.
I covered up the old gearstick hole with some rubber matt bolted down. I didn't want to weld up the hole incase I ever decide to go manual again in the future.I then made up a bracket to hold the B&M rachet shifter. To drill the hole for the cable.. well I basically guessed. By process of elimination, sit the shifter where it needs to go.. I didn't have heaps of choice, too far back and it fouled on the handbrake, too far forward and I couldn't reach it easily. Then just bend the cable from it until you get a feeling for it's natural transition. You don't want any tight sharp bends just easy curves. From there you can get an idea of where it wants to go through the tunnel and drill a hole. You will have to disconnect the cable and feed it up from underneath and re-attach it. The sequential pro-rachet shifter is an awesome beast.. 3 wacks up 3 wacks down and the sequential motion gives you some driving thrills.
The gearbox itself I had inspected, cleaned and a Stage3 shift kit installed. This is basically a uprated set of springs and diaphragms & valve bodies to provide quick gear shifts. The final stage is converting it to a manual valve setup which means I have to shift the gears myself. I opted not for this yet and I can do that later if I wish. I also opted for a 2200rpm torque converter, you can have you existing torque converter modified from standard rpm of around 1700 -1800 to 2200 - 2300 rpm. Anymore than that and you need an aftermarket item. Bare in mind that for a streetcar a high stall of 3500rpm etc would be a pain in the ass really. So 2200 should give me a good jump at the lights in an 1000kg Capri.
Mounting the box was as simple as using the xmember that came with the TeamBlitz kit, pretty much the only peice of that kit that was any good.. I had to slot out the holes to push it right back. The shifter cable bracket had to be remade to mount off the xmember bolt. The difficult part is probably making the transmission cooler lines. You can read more about that >here.
My driveshaft is a Mustang unit with heavy duty universals. I had a single peice capri one I was going to use but after seeing the difference between puny old 4cylinder universals and new heavy duty V8 ones... well.
V8 universal left - 4 cyl uni on right
Opporsite on this on obviously..
At the rear is a narrow Mk1 3L V6 Atlas axle.I don't know how much stronger they are to my 2L one which turned out to be an Atlas anyway. However it's got a few advantages, much bigger drums, lower 3.22 ratio, radius rods, and it's 2" shorter. Which means I could have my custom offset wheels at the rear extra dished with fatter rubber. In fact, before I got my wheels I managed to fit Simons 265/50/14's on the rear with no rubbing.. and the rear guard hasn't even been rolled! Most people fit a 8" or 9" diff behind V8's.. but I've seen the Atlas behind 351's and Chev's before so I thought I'd give it a go. It it breaks it breaks.. I plan on using quaife LSD internals.. which means it'll only be axles breaking and I can always get some of them made up stronger. After all, unless you really punshing the diff at the drags, a 9" is a hell of a lot of weight to be lugging round for the hell of it.
I want to know it has to be there before I bother putting on in.
I cleaned and painted the axle along with new brake shoes, lines, slaves, and new wheel bearings before fitting up with new super-pro bushes. Getting the front eye of the leaf springs back in was a total bitch. Suprisingly I had to carefully grind 5mm off the bush spaces rod to get it even close to fitting up, even then it required the pursuasion hammer...
While I was under the car I noticed something disturbing.. the EFi rated fuel line I thought I put in there had pressure cracks all along it. I ripped it out and soon realised that it was not actually EFi rated fuel hose afterall!! ...luckly that it hadn't leaked or anything. Goes to show you can't trust what people sell you. EFi rated hose is much harder and has "EFi rated high pressure high temp" written down it.
The next problem I had was fitting the radius rods. MKII's have a sway-bar system to aid cornering.. so althought the radius rods fit up to the same chassis bolt as the sway-bar, it doesn't have inner side support for the bush. So with thanks to Andrew Diehl these tidy custom brackets were made to do the job. Bolting through the floor, they provide the neccessary support for the radius-rod bush.
One thing I overlooked was the protrusion from the chassis that the bolt passes through. Thismeans the bush didn't have a nice flat surface to mount against..So after a couple of launches it kinda munched the new bushes..This will be sorted by fixing a 5mm washer in there, but interestingly enough, I replaced them with a different set of bushes and it hasn't been a problem... which is weird.
So, I don't know why the first set ended up like that...maybe I did them up to tight or something.
Anyway, they do a good job of eliminating axle tramp!!
