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Sunday night I was depressed because of the whole "MR2 needs a rebuild" situation, so I went around the west end taking pictures and decided to try and hit the City and see what I could find in terms of photo spots. Let me just say boy am I glad I put my skid plate on because holy crap RVA has some of the worst "roads". Also, I apologize for my less-than stellar pics. I am not a photographer and my Nikon P90, while a very nice point and shoot, is nowhere near as nice as a DSLR.
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4/17/14
Alrighty then. Shims came in (along with a shiny new retaining pin for the middle bar thing)
And here's everything laid out all nice
Basically I said "to hell with it" and put in the two thickest shims I had, one on either side. This put the backlash on the side gears as good as I could get it. My shiny new dial indicator is.....well, it was $35 so it's not great. I then spent an hour and a half heating up the ring gear with a torch and trying to get it installed on the diff with the bolt holes perfectly aligned. Everything went together pretty well after that, I set the backlash and side bearing preload as best I could for my first time. Today I put it in the car and filled it up with some new gear oil. After a ride around the neighborhood it would seem that the clunking is gone! So I'm going to call this a tentative success, as long as bearings don't start whining from improper preload.
4/18/14
Xcessive Manufacturing skid plate is in. I chased the threads in the chassis with a tap and it went in super easy. I also coated it with Duplicolor rubberized truck bed liner, just for a little extra protection.
It fits great, though I think the oil drain hole is placed more for JZ or UZ swaps because it doesn't really line up with the 5M drain. Also, it sits probably 1-1.5" lower than the subframe so it's mad low. I'm gonna have to be super careful to not scrape it on anything.Leave a comment:
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So I got the shims in today, looks like the thickest is 1.3mm, which may not be thick enough to eliminate the slack in the gears. If not, do you think stacking two 1mm thick shims would be bad? To get a better idea of what I'm talking about, see the picture below. Shims are circled in red.
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This evening I started working on the diff. Keep in mind I've never done anything like this before so this is all new to me.
I started by removing the retaining lock things for the diff carrier adjuster bolt things (yeah there's going to be a lot of that sort of language in here. Sue me.) and then removing the two caps that hold the diff into the 3rd member. I was careful to mark everything so it all goes back exactly the way it came apart. Here's my workspace:
Here's one of the races for the big diff bearings. Both of them looked great.
The bar that the spider gears ride on is held in with a little pin that is staked in the housing. That took some persuading to remove, but once I figured out it only comes out one way, I got it.
Here's one of the offending articles: the passenger side axle gear adjusting shim. This one is pretty much exactly 1mm thick. I don't recall the thickness of the ones I ordered, but it was over 1mm which is good.
And the left (driver's) side shim washer: 1.01mm
So now as far as that goes, I'm waiting on parts from Toyota. They were all in a warehouse in California so it will probably be Friday or early next week before I see them.
I did however have a pinion oil seal (two, actually which as it turns out was a good thing) and nut already from when I rebuilt the axle last summer. I never used them but now I can! So basically I used a punch to un-stake the pinion nut and my steering wheel puller to pull the flange off. Unfortunately when I put the oil seal in I forgot to put in the bearing oil deflector so I had to destroy that new seal getting it back out. Luckily I had accidentally ordered two pinion seals last summer so I had a spare. So now the pinion is all back together and shouldn't need to be re-adjusted since I never messed with the bearing.
Here's the new seal:
So now we wait on shim washers. I also ordered a dial indicator with magnetic base from Amazon so I can check my backlash and such. Also in that order is some awesome DEI gold heat reflector tape that I'm gonna go crazy with in the MR2 engine bay. Woo hoo!Leave a comment:
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Long story short, talked to guy 3 hours away about buying his axle. Arrange time/place over facebook chat. I show up, he's nowhere to be found, not responding to messages. Time wasted, kinda pissed.
So, I ordered $25 worth of different sized shims and stuff to re-adjust the stock diff to eliminate the clunk. Looks like I get to learn how to clearance a diff. Hooray.Leave a comment:
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Do you really have to ask?Originally posted by MR2_FTW View Post
Celica/Supra rear end of course. You spent good man hours rebuilding those rear drums (props for that), but you weren't excited about them. If you've got the cash, and not trying to totally do this on the cheap, you know what you gotta do.
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Brought the diff in to work and measured the backlash on the ring gear to be around 12 thousandths. Spec is between 5 and 7 thousandths, so that's part of the issue. The big thing is the passenger side axle gear's shim is so small that the gear has lateral play. This means that when under load, the gear moves away from the spider gears and has way way too much backlash. Now I have a couple options. I can spend like $25 and get a bunch of different sized shims to try and make it work that will take like a week and a half to come in. This will require complete diff dis-assembly and subsequent reassembly, including resetting the backlash on the diff and adjusting the pinion preload; none of which I've ever done before and I lack several of the tools required to do so.
OR
I can drive up to MD and pick up a Celica-Supra complete rear end with disc brakes and LSD for....many hundreds of dollars...which should just bolt on.
Thoughts?Leave a comment:
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great read!
love wagons,
brown+old toyota+ wagon+manual transmission = jalopnik
great trick with the DIY poly bushings, i'll remember that one
had no idea those old i6 engines sounded so good!Leave a comment:
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Anyhow, I got the diff out today. I think there are some clearance issues with both the spider gears AND the ring/pinion. Neither are terrible, but I think a combination of the two is leading to too much play. I'll be taking it in to work with me tomorrow. Hopefully one of the techs will be able to help me sort it out.
Also, this came in
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I swapped out the front parking light peanut bulbs for some LED's and holy god are they bright. And awesome. I did the same on my MR2 (euro dual bulb housings ftw) and it just looks awesome.
Tomorrow my skid plate should be arriving, but more importantly weather permitting I will probably be putting the car in the air and pulling the diff out to investigate my clunk. I'm almost positive it's the spider gears. I'm going to bring the diff into work and have one of the mechanics look at it (the guy restores vintage Land Cruisers, so he knows a thing or two about diffs). The fix will consist of either new shim washers to get proper clearance of the spider gears (like $10), or a spider gear kit with new gears (like $165, with only two left in the country last I checked). So hopefully I'll be rid of this awful rear end clunk relatively soon.Leave a comment:
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Loving it, tons of awesome pictures.
Brake fluid was disgusting lol.Leave a comment:
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