So much for abandoning this thread, but I made a big mistake. The fancy Tilton HTOB I bought for this conversion is not going to work. The compressed bearing is 0.6" short of reaching the spring fingers. It needs to be ~0.125".
I did some googling. There are a couple other adjustable HTOBs out there, but they're all designed with roughly the same height. It's all you would ever need for any of the GM V8 applications, so fuck me. From there, I had a moment where my piggly ass was just standing shirtless in the garage with the box fan blowing my sweat everywhere. I stared at the mess of Camaro/TKX and started to think about how much money I had potentially wasted. Instead of crying, I went inside to cool off and do more googling.
Idea #1) Simply space the whole shebang so that both the retainer and the bearing are at the height they need to be. (Definitely not a good idea)
- The bearing retainer holds the input shaft seal and has a fluid path in it. Spacing it will screw those functions up.
Idea #2) Complicatedly space the whole shebang using the original bearing retainer. (Possibility)
- The original bearing retainer has very little meat for machining. This probably doesn't matter since I really just need to support the threaded section of the Tilton.
- I would need to find a way to mount the Tilton retainer on top of the original retainer which means ghetto standoffs with longer more bolts AND an adjustment locking pin
Idea #3) Ditch all the Tilton stuff and go back to original HTOB to eliminate the locking pin. (Possibility)
- This would mean eliminating that QC so that I don't need to drill holes in the bell (fine)
Thanks, Russell
- Likely to work with minimal lathe work.
*Remove bearing retainer shaft from original retainer
*Cut a grove for HTOB's centering ring.
*Drill/tap two holes
The last two ideas and combinations of both are probably my tickets. All these ideas may also require making my own shims. Check out the pictures with captions for context. Maybe you all can think of something better.
Transmission side of bearing retainer. It would be tough to recreate all this, so I would rather modify it to suit.
Outside of original bearing retainer
T5 HTOB over Tilton retainer. The Tilton piece is flatter and meatier which may be a better piece to modify. It's a big risk to take at $450 though.
This pictures remind me that the centering ring on the T5 HTOB will actually touch the retainer bolts which isn't cool. It will probably have to rest on top and centered in some other fashion. Damn.
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