It's Alive Again

I had a couple hours available yesterday and I finished hooking up the control board and reset the controller to its initial settings. Gave it a few spins while on the jack stands and all was well, so I got the car down and went for a spin. Motor and Tranny are working well so far. I took a few drives down the street, then went around the block and then around a couple blocks. I tried 1st, 2nd, and 3rd as well as shifting while driving which takes a couple seconds without a clutch, but it works well and if I need to get up to speed quickly, 1st is quite useful. The most important thing is no noises from the tranny.

So, back to focusing on a couple items that will allow me to get it registered so I can test it more on the street without fear of being ticketed. Brake light switch needs to be re-wired, and the wind shield wipers need to be re-wired. I will also be working on the power vacuum brake system as well as upgrading the front brakes to Acura Integra rotors and calipers which are bigger, but fit my car. The bigger brakes and the vacuum system together will give me some great stopping power. The rear springs need to be swapped to Integra springs to get a bit higher ride height since the batteries in the back are much heavier than the origianl gas tank.

That's it for now. I am pretty excited that the coupler, new input shaft bearing in the tranny and the motor mount are working well and the car is able to move again.

Motor mounted, noises gone (w/pics and video)

I put the last coat of paint on the motor mount bracket last night and had some time this afternoon to get it installed. Here are a couple shots of the bracket and a couple of it installed.

Motor Mount bracket

Other side of bracket

Bracket installed and motor is secure

Better shot of rubber motor mount and bracket

I removed the jack holding up the motor and the bracket worked great. It barely moved down and I can grab it and shake it and it is all solid. I hooked up the motor to a couple batteries to test it all out and here are the results.

Hopefully this will be the last of the drivetrain issues and I can move on to the power braking system and a couple more items standing in my way of getting the vehicle registered.

Tranny fix and Motor Mount

We discovered in my last post I could not change gears after fixing the input shaft bearing on the transmission. A couple weeks ago I loosened the three detent bolts which hold ball bearings against the shift shafts. It turns out I had tightened these bolts too much and could not budge the shifter. Once loose, I could freely shift into any gear. I tightened them back up to 16 ft/lbs per the manual and all is good. Tested the motor/tranny and everything seemed fine until the last couple times I spun up the motor, I heard a high pitch cyclical noise which sounded like something just barely rubbing somewhere. Oh no, not again.

Took the motor out again and spun it up. All is good. Hooked up a drill to the transmission shaft and it spun nicely. No Noise, so it must be in the coupling or the motor mount tweaking the motor a bit. Put the motor back in and held it there with a jack and all was good, so the thought is the motor mount. The mount was a two piece circular mount that goes around the motor and is held together with a couple large bolts and nuts. It is then attached to the existing rubber motor mount with a bracket my friend James made from 1" angle iron. The fit was never perfect, but I didn't think it would cause a problem. It had a bit of an angle that did not match the circular mount on the motor, so when the big bolts were tightened down, I think the motor alignment was tweaked a bit.

I decided to make a new mount and checked out some other CRX builds online. One guy used an L-shaped bracket that came off his garage door, and he just bolted it to the end of his motor and welded the other end to some metal that attached to the rubber motor mount. So I thought, that sounds pretty simple. I have some extra 1" angle iron and my neighbor can weld, so maybe I can do something simple with the angle iron.

Long story short, it works beautifully. One piece bolted to the motor, one piece running vertically up to the last piece attached horizontally to the rubber motor mount. It took us a bit to get the angles and lengths of each piece right, but it looks great and works well. We added a couple more pieces of straight metal to stiffen the whole structure and it is in the process of being painted. One more coat and I will install it in the car. I hope to take a photo of it this weekend and also take a shot of it installed in the car. It is lighter than the previous piece and is out of the way of some of my other components.

After it is installed, I will test the motor and tranny for a bit and make sure all the gears run well and the motor is spinning freely with no noises. I may then put the control board back in and take the car on the road to check it out. I still have to adjust the controller back to the original settings so as not to jerk the transmission around with the last settings I had in there. On the other hand, I may hold off on that and work on setting up the power vacuum brake system. We'll see how I feel. I think testing the car on the road is more exciting and may draw my attention more than wiring and hoses on the brake system.

3...2...1....abort

1. New coupler designed and created - Check (Thanks Paco)

2. New Coupler attached to motor - Check

3. Motor tested with low voltage - Check

4. Tranny opened and bearing replaced - Check

5. Motor and Tranny mated together - Check

6. Motor/Tranny tested at low voltage - Check

7. Motor/Tranny re-installed in car - Check

8. Tranny fluid added - Check

9. Motor/Tranny tested at low voltage in car - Check

10. Motor/Tranny tested at slightly higher voltage - Check

11. Test tranny by changing gears - uh, Houston, we have a problem.

So everything was going as smoothly as it could have on Saturday, other than the near triple digit heat, all the way until the point where I thought I should check the motor/tranny out in different gears to make sure we don't hear any weird noises. It apparently did not occur to me during the previous tests that the tranny was in a gear and spinning the axles and that maybe it should have been in neutral just as it was when I removed the tranny from the car. Somehow, during reassembly, I think I locked the transmission into a gear, so I can now go forward, but can't change gears or go backwards. The last item in the above check list should have been done right after number 4. 

So, now the motor and tranny are joined together and back in the car and I have to either find a simple solution for unlocking it from the gear it is in, or take the whole thing out again, open the transmission and figure out why it is not switching gears. There is some hope though. There are 3 bolts that have springs and a ball bearing on the end which tighten up against three shafts in the transmission which shift the gears. My hope is that since one of the shafts is engaged on a gear, that maybe that bolt is overtightened and won't allow me to move it to get back into neutral.

Here is a shot of the bolt holes where the bolts with the springs and ball bearings go.

Bolt holes for Detent bolts

Zoom in to read the text

The next shot is the tranny right before we put the case back on. You will notice that 4th gear appears to be engaged and that the detents in the shift shaft are deeper for when the shaft is engaged in a gear than the detent for neutral. This is my hope, that since it is engaged in 4th, I tightened the detent bolt, spring and ball bearing down too hard and now it won't let the 3rd/4th shift shaft move back into the neutral position.