T56 to RV8 conversion.

[Mark]

I didn't check before getting the club hammer out, so don't know what the clearance was like to start with

Heater unit needed a wiggle to remove after though!

One thing the bear in mind is how the cross member drop might affect bump steer and roll centre with different TCA and track rod angles, you could mitigate any changes if you could find some 3 door Cosworth front hubs but they are hard to get hold of and attract Cosworth tax...

[DEVONMAN]

Because the rack moves down with the cross member there will be no effective change to steering geometry as it will be no different to riding lower due to a full tank and 5 passengers.
Never been on a dyno but fully loaded on road tyres it did high 12's at Northweald.
The car was featured in Street Machine in OCT 2017 if you have a copy.

[Mark]

Will look out for a copy of street machine.

I imagine grip on the start line is a bit of an issue with a twin turbo 5 litre!

[DEVONMAN]

Yes, Northweald is not the best surface to launch from.

Yesterday I sorted out the gearbox support. I used a sierra

4x4 steel mount and spaced it down from the standard floor floor slots with aluminium blocks. I made new inserts with longer bolts to slot into the rearmost factory floor slots. As the gearbox mounting surface is at an angle I bolted a tapered ali block to it to get things level and inserted a standard 4x4 mount rubber into that. The plan is to probably get a poly mount which will be more compact and neater. The 4x4 cradle needed a bit of grinding out in places and local restrengthening to clear the gearbox casing but only because I needed it to be as far forward as possible to minimise re-positioning work on the exhaust. In hind sight shifting the exhaust boxes rearwards would have been easier.

[DEVONMAN]

Engine and T56 now going back in and a few hours left now to get everything back on it. Roll on Monday. We previously modified the clutch to hydraulic operation so a slave cylinder has been grafted onto the gearbox to push the clutch arm forwards.
[attachment
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[DEVONMAN]

Job done. Engine and t56 in place and working fine. The shortened prop seems ok but we will get it balanced just to be sure.

[Mark]

Did you fit a weaker spring to the reverse lock out or are you using a speed sensor of some sort to work the solenoid ?

Looking good, I wish I worked as fast as you !

[DEVONMAN]

For the reverse lock out we just used a push button attached to the gear lever inside the gaitor to momentarily operate the solenoid. Looking for a nice push button gear knob at the moment.
I'm very envious of the quality of the work in your project. It's brilliant. At 72 years I have to get a move on and concentrate on practicalities rather than the terrific cosmetic finish that you are achieving.

[Blown v8]

Thank you Devonman for posting,really enjoy reading your posts

[Mark]

Thank you Devonman for posting,really enjoy reading your posts

Me too

What did you do about the old mechanical speedo?

I have not sorted this part of mine yet and it's taken me 8 years to get this far

[DEVONMAN]

We have swapped in an electronic speedo (Autometer) which is driven by a Sat Nav box. No good in tunnels lol.

BUT, now that the T56 is installed, we could drive the speedo from the sender on the T56 which is how things are with the T56 in my Hotrod.

[stevieturbo]

If your speedo is cable, Abbot X do these. Dakota digital might also...I'm sure there are a couple of places who do them

http://www.abbott-tach.com/cablex.htm

They're a little awkward though. I used one for a while until I caged the car...and the bloody dash bar ended up slap bang in the middle of the speedo cable lol

Switched to electronic clocks and dumped the mechanical at that point

[DEVONMAN]

I took the propshaft to Bailey Morris for balancing and they found that the new t56 yoke was manufactured 60 thou off centre and 20 thou loose on the joint and therefore couldn't be balanced. They are not wrong. Checked it myself and the circlip grooves are machined off centre. The yoke was bought from Southwest Speed in the USA and they refuse to accept that one of their yokes is not 100% good. I'm currently waiting for a new yoke from another supplier.