I'm planning for an engine swap for the Spyder over winter. I'm going from the EA82T Subaru engine/gearbox (mid mounted) to EJ20T engine/gearbox. But I have heard that when I convert the gearbox to 2WD or use a stock 2WD gearbox I will have problems with the gearbox strength...or lack of it. Anyone have any dealings with these gearboxs?

Hi

I have heard that they are not very strong, check this link out http://www.gt40club.clara.net/technics.htm#Transaxles 

1302Steve

I have several friends with turbo 4wheel drives and I can say that these box's are pretty strong when driven normaly. Problems arise when dumping the clutch at 6000 rpm, however this should be no problem for your car as I imagine its a load lighter than the porky 1200kg wrx. I've helped a mate put a vr4 engine gearbox into his first gen Hyundi excel, a few mods with a tig and now its a 2wheel drive box. No problems I'm sure all the bad things you hear about the rex box are simply related to the amount of traction and torque avaliable. Oh and later box's are said to be stronger although I really can say personaly.

yeah My Spyder only weighs 585kgs with the EA82, so there is not much weight to get rolling.
And I promise not to give it a bootfull off the line.......yeah sure!

Steve, tell me about corner weighting?what is it? How do you do it? Does it set the same spring rate at each corner of the vehicle? I've still got torsion bar on the front with 914 and coilovers on the rear so I guess corner weighting is not much use except for the rear...true?

Hi Peter

http://www.renaissance-racing.com/GRTechtips/cornerweight.html  Visit this site to find out more about corner weight testing. You will be limited in the amount off adjustment you can do with your car, but getting it as close as you can will be better than doing nothing at all. In a street car situation you will get varying loads from fuel being used carrying passengers etc. Im going to make my own test unit using hydraulics to lift the each wheel, I will then measure the pressure in the system on each wheel to find out the weight of each wheel. This will compare apples with apples.

1302Steve

Yes there must be an advantage to having front corners spring rate (weight)the same and the rear corners the same. Todays project at work will be to make a hyd corner weighting system, I think we'll bolt up to a couple of wheel studs and use a calibrated test gauge on the jack. This is probably your method as well.
Thanks for the tips.

[Edited on 14-10-2002 by speedster356]

Hi

I was going to use an L shaped bracket, the top part of the L would fit into the centre of the wheel, my wheels have a fairly large hole in the middle, the bottom part of the L would touch the ground, then you would apply force in the middle of L to just lift the wheel enough to move a piece of paper under it. Did you understand this, OK its late and I just finished work, get my number of your partner in crime at work and give me a call. You can buy a machine off the shelf to do this but I think they are about $300. I have already bought a few bits to use on my setup maybe we could combine forces?

1302Steve

No problem Steve I'll arrange the calibrated gauge. What units and range do you think? I might be at the meeting on Thursday night so we can talk then.

Cross training an Instrument Tech at work in the fine art of engine installation, and he seems pretty happy about it.....
[Edited on 15-10-2002 by speedster356]

[Edited on 15-10-2002 by speedster356]