520Y - Continued

[EXCEL V8]

You're right Paul - they are all Metalastic bushes as you describe.

Pete

[Lozza74]

Thanks for pointing that out - I had not registered that the bushes were Metalastic.

It looks like I will be taking the front end apart again then. At least its fairly easy to do at the moment

[Lozza74]

Thanks to Pete and Paul for pointing out that my lower wishbone bushes had separated. I'm now most of the way through fighting to replace them with poly bushes.

 

The drivers side bush pushed out easily but left the outer steel tube in the wishbone. A few minutes with a hacksaw split the tube and I could push it out in the vice.

 

The passenger side was another matter. That was firmly attached to the wishbone so in the end I took it to a friend's workshop where the 10T press soon saw it defeated.

 

I am now most of the way through rebuilding the suspension again. Fitting the new poly bushes is fairly easy, but as I always find, once the inner crush tube is inserted into the bushes they end up just that bit too wide to make fitting the large washers easy. However they are in now, so I'm almost back to where I started with the front end. 

[Lozza74]

I reached a big milestone last weekend - the body is now reunited with the chassis!

I have very few pictures for this update, I seem to be doing things that didnt warrant a photo at the time. However for the record, and because pictures are good here is one of the lower wishbone where I had to cut the outer steel tube out. From the look of the wishbone this had been done a couple of times in the past. Im pleased to say that none of the cut marks are mine - I was more careful than that.

 Another little job I did was to replace all 4 jacking points. Well, to be honest I replaced one. The other three were missing completely. I also cleaned up some cracks in the fibreglass above the one remaining jacking point plate. These cracks turned out to only be in the gel coat, but I have now added a couple of layers of new glass fibre over them. This is where I ground out the damaged area.

And here after fixing new plates on all around, and also painting the inner wheel arches with stone chip paint to give them a bit of a clean up from the faded and chipped original black paint.

Finally I dropped the body back onto the chassis. This was surprisingly easy, and as with lifting it off, was done alone.

To do it I aligned the chassis with the body by eye then lowered my scissor lift with the body on it. Once sitting on the chassis I had missed the body mounting holes by a few mm, so I used a trolley jack to lift one corner of the body a cm or 2 and gave the chassis a good kick to move it a bit. Then I tried a bit more science, and used a screwdriver through the mounting holes to 'tweak' the chassis the last few mm. After dropping the body back down the mounting bolts simply pushed back into place.

I put spacers back between the chassis and body in the positions they came out from.

The real test was the rear mounts I had re-made. Amazingly these aligned perfectly and the original spacers fitted back in. To be honest I could have done with about 0.5 to 1 mm thicker spacers, but I wasnt going to try to wrestle for that amount. This is a picture of the (shiney) rear mounting bolt without the spacer in place on the side of the body I did the most work to.

 

Im happy with that.

[Lozza74]

Before I took the engine out of the car last year I drained the gearbox oil, and found that there was a lot of sludge in it, most of which was stuck to the magnetic drain plug. The sludge was quite shiny and metallic, but with no large lumps of metal in it. I thought it didn’t look too bad and considered leaving the gearbox alone, but as I didn’t want to take the engine out again in the future I thought I may as well get it rebuilt.

The sludge looked like this

When the gearbox  came out of the car it looked like this - not very clean, and there was obviously an oil leak around the input shaft.

 

Whilst removing the gearbox it was clear that the bushes around the gear lever had served their time and given up the ghost.

 

Although some people have rebuilt their own gearboxes I decided that it was a step too far for me and I would get someone else to do this work. Reading around on the internet Hardy Engineering Transmissions Ltd seemed to have a good reputation and are not too far from me, so I asked them to rebuild the gearbox - which was no problem. On taking the gearbox to them they have a suitably old fashioned workshop with that deeply ingrained oily smell you only find in places that have been in business for a long time. On a quick walk around there were gears, parts and completed boxes all around. There was also an ambulance up on the lift - obviously in for some work.

 

When I dropped the gearbox off I said I was in no rush as the rest of the car was in bits, and that was perfect as far as they were concerned.

A few weeks later I got a call as they had done an initial inspection. The usual synchro's and bearings could do with being replaced - but also 5th gear had been trying to destroy itself, with several teeth missing bits.

 

I had mentioned the rebuild kit available from the US for these gearboxes, and they asked if I could buy that as their suppliers would not carry parts for this box. They also passed me across an ebay link for a new 5th gear set. So I ended up ordering the parts on eBay and getting them shipped straight to the workshop. I bought 2 parts which both arrived after 2 or 3 weeks:

"Toyota W55 W56 W58 W59 5th Gear Set" from 'cobratrans' on ebay ($190 including shipping and import tax)

"W55 W56 W58 Toyota Transmission Rebuild Kit 5 Speed 1978-91 (BK162WS)" from 'usa.industries' on ebay ($199 including shipping and import tax)

 

Many months later I was getting close to putting the body back on the chassis and called to ask if the gearbox could be ready for Easter. I think the response was 'We'll see what we can do', but that’s also what they said when I asked for the diff back with a few weeks notice, just to have them call up a week later to say it was done.

 

This time I got a call just before Easter to say the gearbox would take a little longer. It turns out the input shaft had been sleeved at some point in the past, and the sleeve was cracked. It would need replacing.

However a couple of weeks later I got a call saying the box was ready for collection. It looks significantly smarter - and cleaner than it was.

 

While the box was away I had been on a bit of a shopping spree for bushes and bits for the gear lever.

The manky mess in the pictures in my last post is the remains of the 'seat sub-assembly' part number 33505-35020. Also needed is the bush that presses onto the end of the gearstick. This is simply the 'bush' - part number 33548-31010.

I also needed the rubber boot that covers the top of the gearbox - part 33555-22050.

I got all these parts from megazip.com - and for a very reasonable price.

I also needed the gasket that goes under the gear lever retaining cover - but to be honest I cant remember where I bought that from - however it turns out it was also included in the gearbox rebuild kit.

 

As well as ordering those parts I did some googling and found some references on Celica and Supra forums to the fact that the socket the gear stick bush fits into also wears. A solution to this has been created by a guy in the states who sells inserts that fit into the socket - from his website - http://www.w58bushings.com/. I placed an order for that kit as well, which arrived a week or so later.  The kit came in a small brown box and contains 3 items. A new 'seat sub assembly', a new gearstick bush, and a bronze bush to replace part of the socket.

The web site has good instructions for fitting the bush, and a trial fit showed just how much slop there was between my new gearstick bush and the original socket - its definitely worth removing this slop.

Since my gearbox was on the floor I removed the top cover for the gearlever mount, took out the rubber gasket and then used an old cloth to stop any debris from getting into the box itself. Then it’s a case of attacking the metalastic bush that is the actual socket with a screwdriver to remove the inner metal ring and the rubber joint.

 

Once that is done and cleaned up the bronze bush gets glued in with JB-Weld, which I need to buy, so have paused for the moment.

[Lozza74]

I've now glued the bronze bush into the gear selector knuckle.

[Lozza74]

To finish off the gearbox before fitting it I needed to replace the rubber mount. These are still available from lotusbits, SJ Sports cars and I'm sure a few other suspects, however the £120 wanted felt a lot to me. As with the rest of the gearbox the mount is a standard part. It is 'Toyota 12371-34020 - insulator, engine mount, rear.

Looking online rockauto in the states have pattern parts for about £5, but I kept looking for a genuine part. Amayama.com claimed to have several available so I gave them a try. The part was £22, but shipping and import taxes were another £40 (from Japan). There was a cheaper but slower option that I didn't use.

10 days later the new gearbox mount arrived. £60 Isn't cheap, but it's a lot better than £120!

From this picture you can see why I needed a new mount.