My current desktop

By Eric

Parking lot at Fuji speedway full of track ready nostalgic goodness…..

Click it!!  Jacked from Kyusha Kai, dude has a nice S30.

RA29 Build part 5

By Eric

We covered what it takes to build a custom subframe to house the new motor and rack and pinion steering in part 4.  In this installment we will build a custom transmission mount and also modify the transmission tunnel to accept the new 3SGE 6 speed shifter which is now located about  4.5″ further back in the chassis.   This first thing that needs to be done is fabricating the new transmission mount so you know exactly where the new shifter will be located in the chassis.  As luck would have it, it appears that the old RA29 mounting bracket looks like it will be a great start to make our new mount for the new 6 speed.  It just goes to show you, never throw anything away from the old motor until your swap is fully completed as you never know what you may need to use.   Here’s a picture of the old mount, as you can see it aligns nicely with 2 of the holes on the transmission.  All I need to do now is fab a bracket to pick up the other two remaining holes.

New bracket made out of 1/4″  thick steel.

The next question is how to stiffen up that 33 year old rubber when there is no upgraded replacements?  A little trick I learned on mounts with voids in them is that you can tape up the holes and fill them with 3M window weld which when hardened actually has the perfect durometer to replicate and reinforce the factory rubber.  And by filling the voids in the factory piece actually stiffens up the mount just as an aftermarket replacement would if there was one available.  Here is what the new mount looks like painted and filled with the 3M.

While we’re at it I decided to stitch weld the chassis mount for a bit of additional rigidity.

Here is the new transmission and chassis mount installed in the car.

Now that we have the transmission properly mounted, the first thing that needs to be done before cutting into the tunnel,  is moving the bracket that attaches the shift linkage to the transmission to the most forward mounting holes.  I’m not entirely sure why these are here, maybe for another chassis, but  moving the shift linkage bracket forward actually gains you an additional 2.5″  which makes it a little easier than moving everything back 7″ total.  You can see the top 2 additional mounting holes in the first picture, and the bottom 2 in the picture above.    When moving the shifter back I felt it was very important to retain the mounting holes for the factory rubber shift boot in order to reduce additional noise inside the vehicle and retain a more factory  installation.   Here is a picture of the original shifter location.

The 4 holes that are circled are the additional mounting holes for the shift linkage, and the small “x” is where the new shifter will be located.  My plan is to measure correctly so I can cut the out around the shifter hole and flip it in order to move it back.  After cutting out the appropriate section I now had to fabricate a small patch to fill the hole that was left over and tack it in place.

Now complete the weld, and grind it down for a nice finish.

Once it’s painted with the boot installed it should be difficult to tell it didn’t come that way from the factory.

Now the motor, transmission, and shifter are exactly where they should be.    In the next installment we will tackle completing the necessary linkage to complete our rack and pinion steering conversion.  Be there, or be square.

KPGC110 Rendering

By Eric

I don’t remember where I came across this but I’ve had it forever.  Pulls off the more modern vibe quite well……

Click for full size.