A New Focus

Okay, I’ve been holding out on you. The bell housing arrived about 2 weeks ago. Looks like a well-made piece, the only issue so far was that the supplied bolts that mate to the transmission had heads that were too large to fit in the machined recesses in the bell housing. Turns out the holes were a standard inch size and the bolts were metric, go figure. Easily fixed by taking the bolts to a lathe. Here’s a couple photos of the long-awaited bell-housing.

The optional hydraulic throwout bearing kit that I paid $200 for was also not a direct fit. (apparently, there IS no direct fit) The front cover of the transmission had to be milled down to a smaller diameter for it. Not a big deal… just another thing to deal with. The TB is a race-quality piece from Howe Racing, so it should be durable, at least. It is mostly fitted and ready to go, just need to work up something to attach to one of the nose cover bolts to keep it from spinning. (because the nifty piece that came with the kit… you guessed it… doesn’t fit)

In other news, after much consideration, we decided to use the stock Focus flywheel in spite of its super-heavy weight. Well, partly BECAUSE of it, really. It’s a really heavy dual-mass flywheel. My logic is that the extra weight, and the dual mass technology should help to damp the torque of the engine, reducing driveline shock, and increasing the lifespan of my GT6 differential. That part has been sourced used, and a new Focus clutch kit has been sourced. The current list of parts we need to get includes flywheel bolts (the flex plate bolts that came with the engine are too short to fit the flywheel) and new seals for the transmission.

Here’s a sad photo of my poor engineless dust-covered Spitfire. Jeff is going to put it on th elift tomorrow and pull the stock transmission. The plan is to slap the engine and transmission together loosely and do a test fit after that. Our first “moment of truth”, if you will. So far, based on rough measurements, we “think” that the engine should fit pretty well and leave about an inch of clearance to the bonnet. We also “hope” that where won’t be any other clearance issues. This test fit will start answering those questions…

This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 9:07 pm and is filed under Probably Car Stuff. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.