Transmission – Check!
My buddy Publio tells me that I’m a bad person because I haven’t blogged Saturday’s happenings yet. He’s probably right. Oh, well.
So, I got over to Mark Lasota’s place in Valrico after lunch Saturday. Packed a bunch of tools, rags, jackstands and everything else I thought I might need into the back of the Yaris, and brought along one of the most important tools for this kind of job: some extra muscle! Publio Moralis, a former Spitfire devotee and current Miata owner, came to help me out.
The donor vehicle was in pretty good shape aside from an engine fire that took out most of the rubber parts under the hood, some light front end damage, and a door that was falling off. The transmission seems to be in good shape, though, and the car only had a little over 80k miles on the clock. We opted to pull the engine and trans out together, since Mark kinda wanted the engine out, anyway. Unfortunately, the shifter housing bolts were seriously stuck, so we had to pull the transmission with the stick attached, which was a MAJOR pain. I highly recommend NOT doing that. But, since the body was scrap, Mark took a sawzall to front radiator support structure to give us more clearance to get the beast out. Start to finish, we spend about 4 hours pulling the engine. Not a speed record, for sure… but it could have been worse. I forgot to take photos of the trans removed from the car… I’ll get some the next time I’m at Jeff’s, which will be soon.
Stopped by Jeff’s shop on the way home to check out the Duratec engine. It’s a really nice piece, and looks like it should fit the car pretty well. It’s missing a few pieces that we’ll have to source, and there are a few other parts that just plain don’t fit the car. I took pictures all the way around the engine for reference, but the two photos below should show most everything. The exhaust side is very clean, and I learned today that the stock Ranger manifold might fit. (it’s a cast piece,but fairly small, and really cheap… cheap is good) The alternator will probably have to be mounted high on that side. The water pump pulley is missing, as is the thermostat housing that fits on the block behind it. The factory knock sensor is present and looks like exactly the same style that my KnockSense kit uses, so should be usable. The oil filter is going to need to be relocated, it fits low on the left side (the filter housing is removed in the photo).
Jeff picked up the Ranger oil pan today, and it fits MUCH closer to the block in the front of the pan, just like we wanted. The Ranger oil pickup tube is on order, that’s all we need down there and we should be able to button up the engine. Jeff said the engine looks new on the inside… which jives with the claimed 2000 miles. He also got a starter today, which mounts above the oil filter location, pretty close to the stock Spitfire location.
At the rate we’re going, we should have all of the parts gathered by the time the bell housing shows up in a couple weeks.
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