UZZ31 manual experiment.

Alright guys and girls, well it took a while but i finally have something worth showing.

So, to start the story, i was after a V8 engine to put into my C32 Laurel.
My main choice was the ridiculously over engineered and under appreciated 1UZFE, but the cheapest solution i found was to buy a complete Soarer and pull everything out of that.

So, i started hunting for a UZZ31 and funnily enough the legend of a girl i have, won a minter on eBay for a awesome price. So we took a day off, traveled up to Hull and picked this up.






BUT i encountered a problem. Id always wanted a Soarer, and now i had one of the best examples id seen in a long time. So i made the painful (and now regrettable choice) of selling the laurel PURELY to fund a manual conversion for this.

Luckily i had a majority of stuff left over from converting my manual supra to a 1JZ. W58 box and accessories, prop, mounts etc. So the largest part i needed was the conversion kit itself.

First of all i bought everything i needed from these guys : Quantum Auto - Your Toyota V8 Source and More!

All i can say is STAY THE FUCK AWAY!

I messaged and inquired about everything i needed and how to do it and the seller, Mark Boldisar, was punctual and helped with everything. But once he got my money he didn't want to know. I spent a good month waiting for the products, but when they never arrived and i received no shipping number i inquired as to why. After the first message confirming who i was, i heard nothing else. Even to this day. Luckily i payed through PayPal the correct way and they refunded me my money instantly.

Next i bought a entire kit, minus a clutch off these guys : sitemap toyotav8 toyota lexus manual transmission adaptors toyotav8

Now these guys were 100% better, prompt messages and information and a few days after payment i received the all important tracking number. 4 days later and this arrived at my workplace.



Consists of flywheel, adapter plate, plate for the concentric slave, new slave cylinder, braided lines, and all fixtures and fittings. Also the workmanship on the pieces were awesome.

So i started getting the Soarer ready for all the parts.



Dove underneath and started to get to work removing the auto box, This was a pain in the arse to do on the floor. But after removing the engine cross member i was able to access all the bolts on the bell housing, so a few minutes later, a split lip, 4 extension bars and a lot of swearing, it eventually came out....Right onto my pinky finger.



After this was out i started pulling bits off i needed, mainly the bell housing itself.



I then fitted the adapter plate to it and tightened up the nuts. This really was a good fit and a well machined piece of kit.




Then you offer it up to the W58. I was informed the bell housing may have to be trimmed away in some places for the bolts to clear.



All i found was the one bolt head obstructing. Sorry for the dark picture.



So i trimmed the bell housing down and everything fitted together perfectly.




Then i needed to fit the slave into place. Again i was told that the bearing sleeve on the end of the W58 spline is too big and needs to be cut off and made flush for the bearing to seat correctly.





The sleeve is thin, so if you're gonna do this FOR THE LOVE OF GOD don't use a angle grinder. Use a hacksaw and slowly cut through it. Once its off file the burrs down until its flush.

I then needed to decided where to route the lines for the slave, you have a number of choices but with this being a American kit, the majority place the lines to the left. So i chose to route it straight up. I checked the clearance in the tunnel so i don't get a nasty shock when fitting and drilled the bell housing.




All fitted with lines.



Next i got back under the car and removed the torque converter and spacer rings, ready to fit the flywheel.



I forgot to mention but with this kit you get a set of ARP flywheel bolts too.



Then i fitted the flywheel and torqued it all up.



Checking with the starter motor but all teeth seem to line up perfectly, not like the typical problem you have with MR2 flywheels and the teeth being the wrong way round.

Next up i ordered a clutch.



Which will be fitted at the weekend, and then its time to offer up the box and see how things go.

Cheers for reading, ill keep you guys posted.

 

Cheers Bolf!

Tbh im fairly happy to, when i was looking for advice all i could find was threads from australia or america as the practise is abit more common.

 

Cheers mate, what kit or concentric slave did you buy? While talking to some companies i was warned off things like the HOWE bearing and a couple more as they just 'floated' on the shaft.

Im using a mr2 turbo clutch kit, uprated obviously to handle the torque but we'll see if it does in time.

Yeh i was fairly lucky as i had a spare box and prop etc already so i thought, why not.

Cheers dude, i should be working on it most weekend so ill try to post regular updates!

 

Cheers mate, yeah ill do that once i get a little further down the line.

Anyway, today i got around to fitting the clutch kit i got the other day.

Fairly straight forward but i needed to find some M8 x 1.25 bolts as neither kit came with them but that was fairly easy.




So clutch in, pressure plate on and all torqued up.
I then planned on trying to fit the gearbox to begin fabrication of the gearbox mount, but i suddenly remembered all the plugs and loom from the auto box.
Apparently one needs to be bridged in order for the car to start, im currently finding this info out from the suppliers, but im curious as to what the others were. If anyone knows, id appreciate it.



So while im waiting for this information i decided to hold off putting the gearbox on. So i started work on installing the master cylinder and pedal.



This is the master cylinder im using, i got it from a member on here (sorry dude, forgot your name) its from a JZA80 supra as im told they are exactly the same. So i started to look at where to fit it. Now luckily Toyota have put a helpful guide to this on the shell itself.
There is already a hole for the cylinder with blank bolt holes pressed into the sheet metal near the pedals themselves.



The only thing leading through this hole is a wire, i haven't found what its for yet but it'll be relocated easily enough. unfortunately i have no pictures of the blank holes as it was bloody cramped under that dashboard.

You'll never get a drill to the blank holes on the inside without removing a lot of stuff so i chose the easier way and removed some things from the engine bay.



This is really all you need to remove to get enough room for a drill, but you'll probably have to punch the holes slightly from the other side to give you a idea where to drill.



Unfortunately that's all i have for this week as i had to stop earlier than expected! But next week the master cylinder should be in place and the gearbox should be on too.

 

Cheers, im not too fussed about boost at the moment if im honest, just want the v8 grunt.

But maybe in time.

Yeh i was warned about this. If its the case i think its because it'll be too close to the clutch pedal rather than central.

If thats the way it goes ill take it to work and re fabricate it to suit.

Ill get some pictures of the pedals for you when i install it all dude.

 

So i got on this again today as i had a little while to muck about with it.

First i installed the master cylinder, as said in my previous post you have the blank holes pressed on the inner side of the master cylinders location, but the only problem is, you cant get much to it without removing a lot. Not even to punch the holes slightly.

So what i did was make a template out of paper to line the bolt holes up with the center bore. It worked well, so i punched the holes, drilled them and then opened them up slightly for a little play.



Its not seated properly in this picture as i needed to fit the clutch line, but as you can see, its sorted.

I then got around to sorting out the neutral safety switch to get the car started.

I red online loads of varied techniques on how to do it and couldn't find a straight, simple answer from anyone. So i took the main piece of advice that popped up in nearly every thread about it, which was to bridge the plugs on the NSS.



This is the plug, and simply, you have to bridge the 2 largest pins together. That's it.

So i made a small piece of wire with 2 male spade connectors, soldered them together so i have no fears about them coming apart and fitted it.




I then started the car to see if it worked, and its fired and ran on the first turn of the key. Job done, so i secured the pins in the plug with some more solder and tapped it up securely.

After that was all sorted, it was time to fit the gearbox. This was a pain in the arse. But after a few minutes, some swearing and jiggling and a few alignment issues put down to my eagerness it went on.



The next stage was to fit the gearbox brace. I was told that the auto one would fit if you drilled out the holes. They were lying.

So next week ill begin either fabricating a new mount or trying the adapt either the w58 mount or the auto mount to fit.