Awesome. A new noise!

[john keefe]

Pictures and words... much appreciated. BTW your work area looks a lot cleaner than mine. JOC, what's that clamping device in the first photo stalk?

[thesameguy]

This thing?

https://us.dremel.com/en_US/products/-/ ... orkstation

I don't have a lot of work surface available, so I gotta keep it clean or I end up working on the ground. TBH, that's what usually happens, but I happened to have room for this. I really need to sort out my situation though... it's VERY crowded in there, and it's getting on my nerves. Just after years of owning old cars it becomes difficult to throw could be useful stuff away.

[john keefe]

Ahh. You know, I was thinking it was a drill press, but I saw no motor. That's actually pretty cool. Have you (can you) use it as a press?

[thesameguy]

For small drill bits that fit into the regular Dremel arbors you can. I've used it mostly with side cutter bits, like a tiny scroll saw, but it's come in handy when drilling out things that are 3D printed as it's small and portable. It also makes a nice stand/holder for the Dremel when using the flexible shaft, although I find I need to clamp the thing to the bench to keep it stable, but overall it works well. It was on some clearance sale at Lowes a while back so I figured why not... I'm not sure I would pay full price for it. It's nice, but not a gamechanger.

[john keefe]

Always thought my Dremels would be a lot more useful if they had a larger, universal chuck that would give you a range a drill and metal working/cutting bits, etc. The flexible snake is really good for small construction stuff; I've just left mine attached.

[thesameguy]

Yeah, there is the Dremel Max stuff (I think?) but then you lose access to the vast majority of accessories. I find tool creep to be a big issue - buy something to make one job easier and then never touch it again. I go down that road all the time, but so far I've resisted temptation with the Max stuff.

Speaking of, I ended up ordering this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0063LMXJ6/

to take those measurements on the transmission. It was by far the cheapest thing of its ilk on Amazon - most were approaching $100 and many two or three times that. Those things had accuracies or ranges I don't care about - 4" and .01mm accuracy is sufficient here I think. Looks like it'll be here tomorrow, so I guess I gotta find where you order shims from!

Edit: Duh, the same place you order the input shaft from...

https://ampdistributing.com/collections ... t-shim-kit

[thesameguy]

This works much better:



Using the same approach as before:

(15.91mm - 9.62mm) - 5.55mm + .07mm = .74mm

Still need a .24mm spacer on top of what I've got, so I'm gonna be ordering that shim kit right now!

[john keefe]

Ha! Yeah, I understand about equipment and tool creep. I'm a GC, so you learn after a few years to make do with what you have and old-school skills, unless it's absolutely essential. It's the rookies who buy all the tools constantly, or the brand new truck every few years, and then go out of business.

OTOH, the one tool I bought a few years ago that I had kept putting off was a Fein plunge-cut saw. Thing is great, and I keep finding more ways to use it all the time.

The other downside besides $$$ with collecting tools is that it left me with no excuses for my wife as to why I couldn't catch up with years of tardy home remodel stuff. Not like I couldn't say I didn't know how to do it, or that I'd have to buy the tools...

[thesameguy]

The thing that is killing me right now is that I have a pile of tools for garage work, but we've also been going through the house and that means things like table saws and whatnot. I don't have room for car tools and wood tools. But we call someone and he's like "It'll be $2000!" and then I'm like, "Well, if I had a tile saw we could do it for less than half that." And then I have to store a tile saw.

[thesameguy]

Both the input shaft shims and output shaft seal have been shipped from west coast warehouses so I'm feeling like I'll be ready to at least get the transmission in this coming weekend. That would leave only the motor mounts to install, which isn't a crisis.

The remaining detail is gonna be for the speedo. IIRC the '98 transmission has a VSS with a cable pass through. I want to keep the VSS there for two reasons: I want to look into using the VSS to provide road speed info to the EEC-IV ECM (wondering if it will improve idle valve behavior) and down the road I will replace the speedometer with something electrically driven. But I'm not ready to do any of that right now, so it needs to stay cable driven.

I've switched rear ends with this - from 3.36 to 3.64 - and obviously my gear ratios are all different as well. Whatever speedo gear is in there now is probably wrong since the Mustang probably would have had 2.73 gears. I'm assuming I just remove the VSS, and stick a new gear in there, yeah?

I'm looking at LMR's calculator:

https://lmr.com/products/Mustang-Speedo ... Calculator

which says

8 Tooth drive gear for 1994-1998 V6 T5, along with my 215/45-17 tires. There is no direct diff ratio selection, but choosing 3.55 or 3.73 rear ends yields a 23T speedo gear. so I feel like I need to buy a 23T speedo gear.

Am I missing anything?

Edit: Interesting note from TCI regarding the 23T speedo gear:

"This is a retrofit gear to allow the speedometer to function with 3.73 and 4.10 rear end gears. Since the gear tooth pitch is slightly different than OE, the service life of this gear is limited to less than 25,000 miles."

Yikes! All the more reason to go electronic!

[thesameguy]

Probably most of you already know this, but I was wrong about the VSS on the '98 transmission. I assumed it had a cable passthrough but it doesn't.... it's just an electronic VSS and it will need to be removed to fit the XR's speed cable. No big deal, but my hope is that the next thing I do for this car is gonna be replace the instrument cluster. Although I actually really like keeping the cluster stock and getting '80s Ford in my face, I have an intermittent tach and a non-functional temp gauge (it's the sender, which I dumped a long time ago) so, meh, whatever.

Also, it seems like USPS bungled my spacers and I'm guessing they won't show up for a few more days, so getting this thing mobile this weekend is off. None too happy about that, tbh, but whaddaya gonna do?

But here's a question for anyone paying attention: If I pull the transmission and bell housing this weekend anyway, what's a good way to stabilize the motor for a while? I don't want to leave a jack or engine hoist outside in this weather, and I don't want to leave the hood up with an engine support beam. Any creative ideas?

[my8950]

But here's a question for anyone paying attention: If I pull the transmission and bell housing this weekend anyway, what's a good way to stabilize the motor for a while? I don't want to leave a jack or engine hoist outside in this weather, and I don't want to leave the hood up with an engine support beam. Any creative ideas?

It's still on the mounts? If so, just run the nuts down a bit and then put the car back on the ground, put the jacks and cherry picker away.

[john keefe]

If you're really concerned about the rear drooping, run a 2x4 or 2x2 to bridge across the strut towers, put one of the bellhousing bolts at least 5 threads into one of the upper bell holes in the block, and then ratchet-strap or rope-tie from that bolt to the 2x4/2x2. Or, to be more in-line, undo one of the valve cover bolts, or intake manifold, etc. that's more directly in line with the wood.

The motor mounts will be taking most of the load, so its not like you're relying on the bar across the struts to hold up a lot of weight. Just make sure whatever you bridge across will easily clear the hood when you shut it (if you're only bearing on the inboard-side of the strut towers, this won't be a problem).

[thesameguy]

Yeah, I am only concerned with keeping it balanced... I don't want it to rock fore or aft and damage something. I like the wood and strap approach.. way better than the Rube Goldberg contraption I was thinking about!

[john keefe]

Hey Sameguy... after you set the lash for your input shaft, if you have some of the shims leftover, I'd be interested. I'm gonna' have to pull the T5 in the future to replace the rear seal on the 5.0L, which would be a good time to tackle a new T/O bearing, and recheck the lash.