(Photobox photo-orientation is a hopeless rats' nest, despite my best efforts - apologies)
As usual with my posts, no pretence at multiple-experiences of doing this installation, but - as usual again - I would have liked to read what I'm posting now before I got stuck in a few weeks ago.
The first thing to underline is that Cangialosi in Florida has sometimes had a bad press whereas if you read his contributions to the Forum (nom-de-plume : 5speeds) you will see that he answers carefully and respectfully from a position of production-engineering, manufacturing, and metallurgical experience that nobody else in this market (or that contributes here) can probably hold a candle to - although I stand to be corrected.
Furthermore, during the 2 or 3 years it took me to get round to taking the plunge, on every single occasion I've picked up the 'phone to ask more or less stupid questions it has been answered by the man himself - unheard of nowadays ; my emails have always been treated within 24h, answered comprehensively, and with respect - also unheard of. When I rang him up unannounced with a question about bolts / threads /positions etc he knew all the answers off the top of the head. Try that elsewhere .... these things MATTER to me. His straight-talking may offend some, personally I find it a breath of fresh-air. He fixed me a delivery date, I paid, and then he beat his date. I was in the motor trade for 20+ years and was in his position for most of them - his patience and tact exceed my own by an order of magnitude.
We have a saying amongst some of my professional mates "All Firms Are Crap .... Including Our Own" - well, frankly, you couldn't say this about Cangialosi's.
Cangialosi supplies a 'box within which there are ratios you have chosen in discussions with him, it is delivered with a thoughtful - if perfectible - selection of the nuts and bolts and accessories required to fit it properly, and a thoughtful - if again perfectible - set of fitting instructions.
So I frankly can't see why anyone would look elsewhere - UNLESS and until there is some new PROVEN and TRIED gearbox in the market that makes adapting the tunnel of the car easier, which you will see - from what follows - may not be within everyone's reach or to everyone's taste.
I have to say that this could be done much more quickly and with far less fuss than the route I chose, but the IMHO the worst thing on any classic-car-'bike-'plane project is carrying out modifications that look implausible or look like amateur add-ons, and I am always determined to avoid this, however long it takes.
The first thing we did was to hang the gearbox off the centre-support bracket and fit the tail bracket and rubbers to get a feel for the general fitting issues. It would "fit" within the Series 1 tunnel immediately, although there were contact issues in various places.
Some of the problem areas are not immediately apparent - you end up resolving one, only to discover there is another one hidden behind ; but it's not rocket-science.
Having no idea what engine/gearbox movements you actually need to cater for, I set about aiming for a 10mm gap everywhere, which is probably excessive - but if you can get 5mm, you can get 10mm with the same approach.
Some metal-removal on the gearbox castings is possible and encouraged - an air-grinder and a few 35mm 80-grit sleeves makes this 10-minutes work, although you may have a couple of takes as successive approximations are refined.
However the principal issue remains the widening of the tunnel "shoulders" by 10mm on each side, so 20mm overall.
I made a bit of 8mm MS plate cut to the shape we identified as giving us the required tunnel profile, it did one side and was flipped to do the other - bolted through temporarily with a couple of M5 screws, and reinforced with a G-cramp, it made peening back the tunnel lip a doddle. A 40-litre nozzle on the oxy-acetylene gave controllable local heating and then it's just a question of using the right hammer.
With the help of my panel-beater mate we drilled out a couple of the spot-welds that joined the side-flanks of the gearbox area to the bulkhead, hammered/dollied the flank-to-bulkhead junctions, then plug-welded the joins - it's actually not difficult here to get a fit/finish that are way better than the original metalwork, and in practice I believe this has made a massive difference to the rigidity of the whole transmission tunnel, and reduced noise.
I would guess that these tunnel mods took about 2 hours from start to finish, and required no panel-beating experience beyond general familiarity with sheet steel, flames, and MIG-welding.
Once we had the clearance we thought we needed, I fitted the gearbox to the engine and lifted the whole lot back in to set the gearbox in its true position - although there were no surprises or real changes in clearances ; the only thing I would say is that the "rotational" adjustment available from the ovalised front engine mounting brackets has a surprising effect on gearbox-to-tunnel proximity and should be taken into account quite early on.
With the engine set truly vertical in the car I also subsequently got a much better air-filter-to-air-box-to-carb fit than I had before. For all Cangialosi's warnings about some fittings/brackets potentially requiring drifting/filing/adapting, I found that everything fitted perfectly first-time around.
The tricky bit is what you do about the gearbox cover ; mine is probably from a 4.2, a steel one, and I was determined to make it fit better than new. You DON'T need to go to the lengths we went to, unless you're an unashamed OCD sufferer like me, so don't let this put you off this gearbox - I am sure I would have done the same with whatever 'box I had ended up using.
We heated-dollied-tweaked the front end to follow the new bulkhead cut-out, but you end up with insufficient metal on the sides because you're making it wider ; I made a horse-shoe from 20/10 sheet to replicate the bulkhead foot-print, then tacked this to the cover (all in situ), after which it just required a couple of 15/10 ears adding on to reinforce the lower corners.
I had plugged and flattened all the original bulkhead mounting holes, so fitted five threaded inserts (sorry, M6) into just the bulkhead. By initially doing 4mm pilot holes, then opening up the cover holes to 7mm, you get perfect hole alignment and can then further tweak the bulkhead-cover fit with a hammer and dolly.
There was a clearance issue around the speedo-drive, too, which took a bit more skill to do neatly, but with the cover in place and lamb-farmer-wrists it is easy to dolly/hammer the cover and tunnel flank into a perfect fit.
Three of the cover-mounting screws came through in positions that made their ends needlessly close to the gearbox casting, so rather than fit short screws or gouge the gearbox (which would in fact have worked just fine), I made three new mounting ears for the cover that dropped the screw axis way below the offending seam and then fitted M6 inserts all round.
All the side fittings had new 15/10 x 15mm strip plates tacked on to reinforce the heads.
Once all the fittings were tightened up, the whole tunnel area became a million times stiffer and better-fitting than it had before, which augured well for noise insulation issues.
The access required for the reversing lights, oil-filler access, and (probably) front UJ greasing are all different, so we made and tacked circular 15/10 plates in place instead of the huge original rubber plugs, and drilled 3 x 1" holes (which you can centre and align precisely to suit your car) now fitted with suitable grommets. The filler and drain are really convenient 3/8 square female plugs, so require no socket or tool beyond a short extension.
The reverse switch is supplied with poor wiring connections that occupy a surprising amount of room, and I had to cut/shut/heat-shrink these before they would fit - and then still ended up taking the wires out into the cabin, routing them up behind the carpets. With hindsight these would have been far more manageable with soldered flat-eyes held on with nuts, but the thread is an odd UNC which I didn't have .... I'm sure Cangialosi will supply these in future once he's asked.
(tacking a support bar for selector-cover clearance metal-bashing)
I had a slight potential issue with a selector-cover clearance, needing an extra 5mm over just a small area ; with hindsight this was an over-kill but someone might like to see how easy it is to tweak sheet-steel even for an amateur, provided you constrain the area properly - this took 30 minutes in all but gave me even more clearance and confidence that I wasn?t going to get ominous clunking.
(G-cramps holding angles before heat-application and Warrington hammer)
(Can't work out if this is a rib or a dip, but it gives another 5mm clearance over a small area)
Regarding heat and sound insulation, I believe the proper place to do this is before the heat ever gets into the shell, not afterwards, and then fight it inside the cockpit ..... this aluminium-faced composite tunnel shield from Design Engineering Inc
http://www.designengineering.com/catego ... insulation
is easy to work with, follows curves, hollows and undulations with a satisfying thump of the fist, and sticks like the proverbial.
(Hole punching for the rivet bosses - always done on end-grain)
One of the things I realized during these operations was that the cut-out in the original gearbox cover was way greater than was actually required for the movement of the new gear-stick.
Furthermore, because the JT5 is lower than the Moss 'box, you can solve the issue of fitting the chrome-trim screws which - on my car at least - foul on the gearbox cover ; I ended up lowering the turret on the cover by 15mm, and making a flat plate (gas-welded all around) to fit the foot-print of the gear-lever gaiter and its retaining ring. This is the only irreversible modification to the car - if I wanted to refit the Moss it would now require a new gearbox cover because of this lowering, but since it isn't the original part anyway .....
The original speedo cable was long enough, and a P-clip (just visible top centre) holds it stiff enough to keep it clear of the UJ. Expect to have to grind some off the rear of the selector cover, visible here - I even fitted thin serrated washers under the rear 2 bolts but believe this was excessive. Some tweaking under the rubber cover too, forgot to photograph this - but each gearbox cover will be different.
The 20mm black closed-foam sheet we make racing 'bike seats from seemed like a good starting point for the sound-deadening bung (old sofa or w.h.y.) that is recommended for installing under the gearbox cover, it can also be sanded (has to be by hand) with really coarse sand-paper to get really neat/smooth edges ; those edges tuck nicely down the flanks of the tunnel, a lip left at the front seals off the opening to the bell-housing, and I used some more of the Tunnel Shield to add an extra thickness that now sits over the gearbox to protect the foam from some of the heat.
I realized at the last minute that the PO (in his rush to finish and flog the car in 1990, during the last "bubble") had actually resorted to GLUING SHORT SCREWS in place for the front of the gaiter-trim !
Is this a record-botch ?
So it was a relief to find that the Festool 90° drive would fit to drill the relevant holes ... and the screws now all clear the gearbox cover. Will fit the right ones with cup-washers later, honest.
The original ferrule on the gear-lever was slightly slack but a bit of self-adhesive heat-shrink on the shank took up the slack and is invisible in use.
The middle engine hanger brackets had to be further modified to clear the bulkhead seam - mine had already been scalloped in the past, and needed the scallop extending upwards by 4 or 5mm, so my engine/gearbox position is obviously not exactly where it was before.
I had no prop-shaft clearance or length issues, everything was perfect, but I would confirm what has been written elsewhere - don't even consider doing this mod with the IRS in place.
The "slip-joint" (that's the splined part that ties up with the front UJ, to you and me) can't be fitted to the rear of the gearbox when lifting it into place, and is well-nigh impossible to coax into place afterwards, never mind fit UJ bolts comfortably ; it should be fitted, on the bench, to the prop-shaft, then slid up the tunnel from the back by one person and guided through the oil-seal onto the gearbox splines by another.
SO WHAT?S THE RESULT LIKE ......... CUT TO THE CHASE ??? etc
For a start, the car is undistinguishable from the outside and inside unless you really know how to spot a bell-housing change and don't notice the different pattern on the gear-lever knob .... which I had intended to not fit, and keep the old, but the bullshi---r in me got the upper hand.
As regards the driving experience, and after 1.500 km of recent usage, having previously driven around Europe for 11 years with a Moss box and a 3.54 diff, words fail me to be honest.
French roads (on UK plates and UK driving licence, ahem) just have to be the perfect place to run an E-Type .... and even more so now, with 5 speeds.
How long that Utopia lasts remains to be seen, of course ??
The impression of silence, refinement, and effortlessness that you get when shifting from 4th into top is just .... Magic. The new 4th is exactly the same ratio as the old one, so comparaisons are easy. Fast driving on ANY sort of roads feels so much less stressful, and the "old" car is still just one shift down away.
First gear is 12% longer than before (2.95 instead of 3.37 ?), which I find much nicer and better adapted to the engine, Second is (imperceptibly) 4% shorter (1.94 instead of 1.86 ?), same for Third which is 5% shorter (1.34 instead of 1.28 ?), and 5th is a whopping 27% longer than the old 4th - but the engine pulls it without hesitation, and mine is bog-standard and probably even a bit flakey.
This is 10% longer than a UK spec Moss/2.88 diff combination, and I fully believe David/Heuer's judgement that a fresh motor with slight tweaking will comfortably pull a still shorter top gear with no detriment to the experience. Depends on where you drive ?
It's impossible to know where the mechanical silence comes from - tunnel DEInc insulation ? - excellent tunnel cover fit ? - foam padding under the cover ? - a good gaiter fit ? - all four ? - but the overall result is a complete absence of gearbox noise, despite warnings I had read about alloy castings producing more tinniness to the transmission.
Obviously there is no longer any whine from 1st and reverse gears, which is lovely, although I do still double de-clutch on all changes since my father forced us to learn this from day one .... aged 16, and in a Ford Escort.
So, yes, I would do this all again tomorrow.
