David, brace yourself. You have stumbled across a small group of
demented people here (on chapman-era, that is) who, among other things,
are interested in Elan gearbox conversions. We may give you no rest, for
many days to come. ;-)
David, you wrote:
>about 5 years ago I fitted a 5-speed gearbox from a T18 Toyota to an S4
>Elan.
Wow! Yet *another* prospective Elan 5-speed gearbox. The plot thickens.
Ummmmmm... Toyota T18? What be that? Is it one of their truck 'boxes?
>The ratios were dreadful so I had some straight cut gears made by
>Hollinger Engineering here in Melbourne to match those of the ultra
>close box in the original Elan (2.5:1 first gear).
Ahh yes. Heard of Hollinger, from Bill Sherwood! Recently, Bill
Sherwood expressed some doubt as to the willingness of Hollinger to
continue to do custom work for us *mere* amateurs. :-(
The B man wrote:
> Unfortunately, Hollinger isn't an option anymore. Ol' Pete only works
>with the Group A teams, and so has nothing to do with the 'little people'
>like us. For my latest close ratio gearbox, I went to Ivan Albin's at
>Wangaratta. Unfortunately he too is now not interested in cutting gears
>for the public. FWIW, I had to get 4 gear sets cut at Aus$500 a set.
>Expensive, yes, but the end result is superb and I got the exact ratios
>I wanted.
A bit of (picky, picky... ;-) Elan gearbox nomenclature... the 2.51 first
three rail is generally referred to as "close", as distinction from the
2.97 first widget, which is called "semi-close". At least for UK and
'Amercun usage, "Ultra-close" is normally reserved for aftermarket gear
sets that have closer than 2.51 first gears, contained in the three rail
Ford case.
>This combination allied to a
>4.2 rear axle ratio gives a great set-up with about the same overall
>gearing in "top" as the original drive train. The gear stick position
>had to be re-engineered
I.E. it came out too far back, and the remote change housing had to be
shortened? (Deja vu...) How did you go about this? I would love to
hear more details...
>and I required a 16mm adapter plate between the bell
>housing which was readily available here to suit japanese 5-speeds into
>Escorts etc.
OK, so that bell housing had the right engine and tranny bolt patterns,
but the wrong length? And, the adapter plate went between the engine
and the bell housing?
Where did you get this bell housing?
> I tackled the clutch throw-out by simply welding an alloy
>block onto the bell housing where the original Elan one was and used the
>Toyota throw-out lever and a "small" diameter slave cylinder from an
>Escort. The speedo drive was very tight and very tedious but with
>sufficient patience I got it to work. The gearbox mount to the chassis
>was straight forward with a flat plate made to fit the appropriate
>Toyota mount.
>With the 150hp stroker motor fitted to the car and
>14*6 Minilites with good rubber it is a real weapon.
Indeed. Sounds like gangs of fun!
Do you remember what you used for a clutch disk? Did you use the Ford
flywheel and pressure plate? What about the spigot (throwout) bearing?
Regards,
Erik Berg
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