Never before has so little power been made from so much displacement! (Page 46 of 57)

What is it that you do again? Do you work in a transmission shop or are you just a professional collector of random driveline components?

I write software for the automotive industry. well, currently for the heavy trucking industry (Navistar)  I've also done work for Acura, OnStar and GM in the past.

the shafts and such i do keep around, the strength of a transmission shaft is ridiculously high and has convenient things like splines already on it. I've got a small bin of them. that one in particular is out of my daily driver, when i swapped the 3.5L V6 into my MR2 i needed different gearing so that shaft had to come out.

i also keep a couple driveshafts around for their ends, some electric seat bases for their linear actuators and a few other things. but mostly, anytime i work on someone's car i make it a point to scope out all the parts and what they may be useful for in the future. the goldwing final drive was something i bought for a different project a while back. i took it apart to see the insides and ended up not using it for that. it had since gotten recycled to save space in the shop, but when i saw the need i had to fill here, i remembered it. they are very cheap due to the number of people that convert them to trikes a very low millage unit goes for $30-60 and it's a very low helix angle bevel drive.

it's a different chassis, but i've already got a plan to bring a lemony version of some exotic mid engined sports car to Lemons. probably for the 2013 season. the motor, suspension and frame is already sitting in my garage

worked on the GT3000 box yesterday:

when i opened it, there was a bit of milkshake sludge inside, but the bearings all appear fine:

so i made a new shaft:

welded a block of aluminum at the right place and machined it to hold a seal:

and here we are:

and now there's enough room for a guibo joint in the middle:

also, the matching spline for the other side is proving hard to find, i'll just weld in a pinion spline there so i can bolt on a drive shaft yoke and be done with it.

at least there's no EGR system on it

Yeah, i 2nd that opinion.

as for getting another opportunity to pass this thing. it's looking more and more like June 10th at autobahn will be where you may get a chance.

True, that!

Snuck off to the shop for a few hours tonight. everything machined tonight was apparently made out of stuff hard as hell. the ceramic tooling got a workout.

the driveshaft spline and mutsubishi box have been merged:

the BMW drive flange and the Toyota E153 driven gear have been merged:

which gives us one almost completed GT3000 box:

I just have to seal the existing vent and make another one, seal the box up and fill it with oil.

i have to shorten the yoke a bit, but this is how the driveshaft attaches then:

i also have to file down the blue stuff on the splines a bit, the heat from the welding did melt it a bit and it's not as good a fit as it should be anymore.

it is rather amusing though, just in this one component the power goes from:
BMW->Toyota->Mitsubishi->Dana

and that's why i call this one man band "Frankenstein Motorworks"

I thought a bit about this:

which made me make a list of all the stuff in the chain:

custom fuel injection design
kinner radial engine (1936 design)
custom prop flange with alternator drive, triton V10 tone wheel, cummins turbo diesel flywheel & bmw guibo flange
custom prop nut
bmw 533i coupler
toyota MR2 MKII transmission intermediate shaft
mitsubishi 3000GT transfer case
dana driveshaft components
honda goldwing 1800 gearbox
subaru 2008 wrx flywheel
subaru 1993 2wd imprezza clutch, pressure plate and transmission
hybrid subaru & toyota MR2 MKI drive flanges
shortened passanger side MR2 MKI axle shafts

other non drive component potential failure points:
custom rear crossmember
engine & transmission mount
flywheel & goldwing holder assembly.

for the power to get from the motor to the wheels, it has to go through 11 welds that i've done. and that's not counting brackets and such that hold the things in place to counter the torque applied by the engine.

the power gets transfered between 7 joints (1 guibo, 2 u-joints, 4 CVs) and 12 gears are active at any given time (4 bevel helical , 2 strait helical, 2 hypoid, 4 spiders) to get to the ground.

the shaft changes speed a ridiculous number of times, down, up, variable, down

So if i had to put money on what would break first, i'm not sure that i could pick any one thing. but yes, it's unlikely that i'll get it all perfect. by best guess is the goldwing box will overheat

I'm not going to claim i know everything on this. but i used to have this problem quite a bit when i used to offroad. but then i met the guy who owns the machine shop i do all my machining at and he's taught me everything i know about this stuff. he's got an advanced degree in metallurgy and showed me how to properly weld together a shaft and make it hold.

the heating and cooling does need to be controlled and i have to use special TIG filler rod. but at the end of the day I've replaced transmission output shafts and beat them over and over without a failure now that i know how.

granted, I'm just an amateur. if one of these shafts fail it's because i misapplied the technique, not that it isn't possible.

also, other things like that BMW drive flange are welded with special rods. whenever you weld high carbon steel like gears and shafts you have to worry about making things too brittle.

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