Why has't thou forsaken the T5? You could have at least tried it. Then if you took it out, you'd know what you were missing. Short track? Long track? Don't want to keep slipping the clutch barely moving in traffic? There was a gear for that. You could just put in 4th and pretend it wasn't there. Just curious! ========================
Good question.. In my little time-warp world on this build, I actually did have the T5 setup on the road for about 3 weeks in Oct 2012... (This car is being built to be a 95% DD with an occasional track visit).. I learned quickly I'd made a huge mistake choosing to run the 3.9 ratio Miata diff.. the car was very, very unpleasant to drive at freeway speeds (taching up over 7K to barely keep up with CA traffic)- not to mention 1st gear was uselessly low.. so that meant going back to the Ford 7.5 diff to fix the ratio issue... I also learned that shifting through the bike tranny was very, very harsh on the driveline... absolutely had to do a redesign and incorporate a guibo or redo the driveshaft with a torque resilient tube -TRT-.. (The bike tranny/paddle shifter was my preferred method of shifting- as shifting through the T5 proved the ratios were too wide for
fun driving
) Finally, I don't know when or how it happened, the T5 input shaft was discovered to be slightly bent (giving the whole car an awful vibration).. maybe I did it upon yanking it from the donor in the wrecking yard? Maybe the SoCal outfit that the the expen$ive respline on the shaft somehow bent it? (their work was pretty shoddy..)
In the end, although I loved my 30 forward and 6 reverse gear combonation setup- I decided it was just not cost effective to keep dumping $$ into working and reworking this inline tranny option.. The need to move the T5/make room for a 7.5 diff meant yet another front driveshaft mod... and the inclusion of a guibo meant machining an adaptor... / not to mention another T5 input shaft needed to be resplined $$$...
It came down to this: The T5 introduced 70+ lbs to the car
, with the benefits being reverse and overdrive
... I decided I could cheaply and effectively find a 7.5 ratio to fix both my freeway RPM troubles
and my too-low 1st gear issue; and although I know I'm going to miss reverse, I figure I'll learn to live without it, or more likely, find a different way (electric methinks) to engineer it back into the car later.
I don't yet know if I've solved my driveshaft/high RPM/vibration/crappy 1st gear issues or not. As of today (4-25-13) I've installed my 'old' 7.5 diff and have stuffed a 2.73 R&P in it... I've also modded a BMW 2-piece driveshaft with a slip yolk and retained the sought after guibo.. I'm still in-process of mounting/placing my carrier bearing to get my DS angles right... I'm also held up with a fuel tank issue, but all should be resolved in the next few weeks
-ccrunner
_________________
Dean
1972 Honda N600 Restomod "ccrunner's N600 VFR800 repower"
1963 Volvo P1800 Restomod
http://locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=163091959 Berkeley SE492 Restomod...
viewtopic.php?f=36&t=19397"ccrunner's 1960 MGA coupe Restomod" found on MGExp.com