Street Build 1g build - The Real Life Trials and Tribulations of building a DSM

[all black 4G63]

nice build man! just curious, where did you come up with the idea to use the MOPAR style knock sensor? also, I notice you installed the slim fan mounting hardware using the springs between the tab and radiator. Is this the proper way?? I have the same and could not find an answer for that from Mishimoto. and is your radiator lower support modified to bring the radiator back at the bottom or is that stock. What are those radiator support brackets?

 

[Anfurnyy]

When’s this thing gonna run??

at this rate probably not in my lifetime

 

[Anfurnyy]

nice build man! just curious, where did you come up with the idea to use the MOPAR style knock sensor? also, I notice you installed the slim fan mounting hardware using the springs between the tab and radiator. Is this the proper way?? I have the same and could not find an answer for that from Mishimoto. and is your radiator lower support modified to bring the radiator back at the bottom or is that stock. What are those radiator support brackets?

Thanks! Its coming along.
Its actually just a wideband Bosch knock sensor. I wanted to use it because i wanted to be able to fine tune the knock frequency so that i can "tune out" any false knock.

As far as the fans, honestly I'm not sure. There could be a different way but the springs are just to keep tension on the fans/mounts. If you mounted them on the other side of the radiator, it might hit the AC condenser from the height with the springs. The bottom radiator mount is stock.

The radiator brackets are Antilag brackets. I believe i ordered them from DSMotorsport.com

 

[Anfurnyy]

Alright so here's the update
Last update i was working on looping the harness. Finished doing a little more of that but not much.
I moved onto remaking the starter harness since it was ugly and clean up that harness a bit. Re-made the power and ground with the same 4ga wire which is still considerably larger than the factory wiring. Not much to say about this really. Loomed it up in the same Tessa tape, however I need to redo the loom because the wires need moved a little to fit better.


Tore apart the T-case to re-seal it since i forgot to actually seal it when I assembled it last time.

A long while ago I mentioned that 2nd and 3rd gear grind when going into gear. I decided to dive into that, even though i had the trans fully installed.. Got to working pulling it out. It took me about 45 minutes. Not too bad.


Over the next few days I started the teardown of the trans. During which I noticed some pretty concerning things which I will post pictures of.
This transmissions was apparently "rebuilt" by a local shop because of a previous failure.

First off, pulled off the end case and was off to a bad start.
5th Gear hub is pretty trashed. Someone pretty catastrophic went through here. It took fair sized chunks out of the body of the gear. That wasn't the only thing.

The nuts SEEM to be staked but don't seem to be staked very well. I don't think they backed off, but who knows. Under the 5th gear hub/slider assembly there's a pretty big gouge

I was able to Impact off the Nuts. They seemed to be loose because I was able to literally hold the gears with my hand and impact them off.

The Synchro retaining spring and the keys were caked in both residual metal shaving, AND freaking RTV. all 3 keys had RTV Stuck in them, and stuck to the retaining spring. Some bit chunks of metal in the blue shop towel.


i also found more chunks inside the I THINK this is the viscous coupler? Whoever rebuilt this trans use a roll pin that was about 1/4" too long. I couldn't punch it out all the way since it was hitting the gear. I had to unfortunately bend the pin to the side and continue to punch it out. Hopefully not damaging anything more.

Under 5th gear, now you can see the big gouges from whatever went through the trans.
Now that I'm looking at these marks, it looks like someone hammered a flathead under the gear to try and get it pulled up..


I continued to follow teardown instructions from vfaq and YouTube and got the bearing plate removed where I found more RTV pressed under the bearing races, and bearing shims.. on all 3 bearing races.


continuing to remove the lower casing, i found that someone had definitely forced their way into the lower casing with a flat head damaging the casing.

More Metal shavings inside this oil passage thing to 5th as well.

Overall the gears themselves look pretty good in my very limited experience. This is my first exposure to transmissions so.. I'm definitely not confident in what I'm talking about. I dont see any significant damage, missing teeth, broken forks anywhere. See my quick video here: Transmission Video


The little magnet was caked in oily shavings

More carnage on the 5th gear hub. it also looks like the splines in the hub itself might be bent as well.
Ill upload the picture of the bend spline later. On my other phone.

Bell housing case, you can see where the gears wore into the case. Not sure if improper shimming or what.


The Shift forks also seem to have a bit of wear on them also. The Sliders have some markings on them from where the forks sit on them as well. Pictures of the sliders on my other phone.


My worry is I have absolutely no idea how the rest of the input shaft, or intermediate shaft look as well as the rest of the gears. I don't really want to tear the stacks down to find out because I don't want to have to deal with shimming and pre-load but I might not have a choice.

At the very least as of right now, i need a 5th gear hub.

If anyone has any input, or recommendations, feel free to comment. I dont want to spend too much on getting this back up to running condition as i plan on going PPG Dogbox later on. If this costs too much to rebuild it might just bite the bullet and go PPG before this goes back together.

 

[all black 4G63]

Thanks! Its coming along.
Its actually just a wideband Bosch knock sensor. I wanted to use it because i wanted to be able to fine tune the knock frequency so that i can "tune out" any false knock.

As far as the fans, honestly I'm not sure. There could be a different way but the springs are just to keep tension on the fans/mounts. If you mounted them on the other side of the radiator, it might hit the AC condenser from the height with the springs. The bottom radiator mount is stock.

The radiator brackets are Antilag brackets. I believe i ordered them from DSMotorsport.com

Nice! Are you running ECMLINK?

 

[Anfurnyy]

Nice! Are you running ECMLINK?

Link G4+

 

[KingofGold]

Sitting here at four in the morning wondering if my car is worth rebuilding has turned into raw determination to put the work in, reading this thread and all the pages and pages has been really inspiring. Having very little knowledge but a huge network of supportive friends who are into dsms is also a plus, but I felt like it wouldn't be worth it. I see now that for the headache, I'll gain so much experience and love for this car that I probably will keep it until I drop or it does. Thanks for this. No other real input here other than a thank you for your posting and a thank you for the community to show me loving something fully is truly rewarding.

 

[Anfurnyy]

Sitting here at four in the morning wondering if my car is worth rebuilding has turned into raw determination to put the work in, reading this thread and all the pages and pages has been really inspiring. Having very little knowledge but a huge network of supportive friends who are into dsms is also a plus, but I felt like it wouldn't be worth it. I see now that for the headache, I'll gain so much experience and love for this car that I probably will keep it until I drop or it does. Thanks for this. No other real input here other than a thank you for your posting and a thank you for the community to show me loving something fully is truly rewarding.

What its worth is subjective. If you feel like you want to learn, tackle and overcome challenges than perfect! It's really up to you if you feel like it's worth all the work. I CONSTANTLY have to ask myself if I want to give up on this car because it seems like everytime I fix something, there's 2 more things that take its place.

I won't say this project has been easy, because it's not. But I always ask myself to put in the work and make a decision after I've actually had time to enjoy the car. There's been a few times I thought about selling it because I've just lost motivation to put in double digit hour days working on it, but in the end I talk myself out of it because I've never given it a chance at the potential I'm setting it up for.

If for nothing else, the knowledge of fixing unique issues is so worth it when It comes to working on cars.

 

[Anfurnyy]

So i decided to continue to pull the trans apart to see what else i could find and see if everything was going to be re-usable.
I found some more pretty awful things.


This is 3-4 hub. The fork looks like it kind of wore it out a bit. Maybe i should replace this too?

The input shaft was pretty much full of RTV. The few oil galley holes in it were stuffed with RTV, and then i found HUGE chucks of RTV inside both the input and intermediate shafts..


I got the whole input shaft stripped of everything except the bottom roller bearing and despite those holes being plugged it looks really good. I suspect that this transmissions wasn't ran for long, which is a good thing for me.


i was only able to get some gears off the intermediate shaft. I don't have the right gear puller for it.

Not sure what worn synchros really look like but here i believe is the 3-4 hub and its synchros.


I ordered a whole bunch of parts for the trans from Jacks to get this rebuilt as much as i could to hopefully hold me over until I can swing a PPG Dogbox.

1st/2nd gear needle bearings
3rd/4th gear needle bearings
3rd/4th gear slider synchros
2nd gear double synchros
all new Input, and intermediate shaft tapered roller bearings
5th Gear needle bearings
5th gear synchro
input shaft seal
both end nuts
1-2 shift fork
3-4 shift fork
all new synchro springs for all hubs
all new synchro keys for all hubs
double roll pins for all forks
tcase crush washers
fill plug washers

 

[Anfurnyy]

I was able to get the rest of the gears pulled off the intermediate shaft by messing with the gear puller.
Finished disassembling the Intermediate shaft.


Inspected all Synchro's again and honestly, they look beat. The look almost as if sand went through where the the gear rides on the inside of the synchro. I think i understand that this isnt what causes the grinding when shifting but I feel as if it would contribute to bad rotation of the gear inside the Synchro. All of them looked like this basically. I also noticed that on the 1st gear synchro the teeth were rounded off.


Surprisingly, 2nd gear synchro's teeth looked okay.


I measured the gap between all Synchro's and the gear they went with to about the wear on them and if they truly needed replaced or not. FSM shows .50mm and below, replace it. Well, my feeler gauges were dragging pretty hard on the ones it fit into, and i believe a couple (I cant remember off the top of my head) it didn't fit at all. So, in my opinion i think the synchro's needed replaced. FSM didn't specify a clearance for 2nd gear which I understand is the double Synchro so it might have a different clearance but i treated it just like the other 4. All of them are getting replace anyways...

I also inspected the intermediate shaft a little closer, and it appears that some of the gears have small chips right off the corner of about 5 of them.


I was able to get my stating brake mocked up to the Trans tunnel. Put it in place, marked the holes with a sharpie and fought almost everything on the driver side of the interior to get a damn drill in there to get it drilled out. I need to pick up the correct length bolts but it should hold pretty well. Its just mounted directly to the trans tunnel and ill have some washers in there as well to offset some of the gap as the trans tunnel is not flat.

 

[92AWDHX40]

Man that's not good but getting her fired up will definitely feel better

 

[Anfurnyy]

Man that's not good but getting her fired up will definitely feel better

Yeah, I'm torn between running it as is and try to hold out for my dogbox or getting it replaced with a new shaft and still going dogbox later.

 

[Anfurnyy]

Snagged a 300m transmission output shaft while it's on discount! Might as well since the trans is apart anyways.

 

[Anfurnyy]

Annnddd staging brake fully mounted up. Solid as could be. Just enough clearance for the HVAC/Gauge cluster trim too.
I'll probably shoot some paint in the drilled areas to hopefully keep it from rusting, and lock tight them nuts too.

 

[Tina94]

Great thread, just devoured it over the past few days. I hate to say it, but as much as I try to stay 100% local, this is why from now on I'm outsourcing all transmission stuff to big names with big reputations online. Been burned too many times by local shops "rebuilding" with shitty used parts or doing questionable work. I think TMZ is back up and running now if you need a professional's intervention. I was just on their site yesterday because they're local-ish to me and have a fantastic reputation.

Love the paint scheme on your car and the ultra high tech build you're rocking. Makes my wiring projects seem much smaller and totally managable. Excited to see her run!

 

[Anfurnyy]

Great thread, just devoured it over the past few days. I hate to say it, but as much as I try to stay 100% local, this is why from now on I'm outsourcing all transmission stuff to big names with big reputations online. Been burned too many times by local shops "rebuilding" with shitty used parts or doing questionable work. I think TMZ is back up and running now if you need a professional's intervention. I was just on their site yesterday because they're local-ish to me and have a fantastic reputation.

Love the paint scheme on your car and the ultra high tech build you're rocking. Makes my wiring projects seem much smaller and totally managable. Excited to see her run!

Thanks for stopping by for the read! I appreciate it

I always try to do things with myself. I also have been burned on shotty work from multiple local shops. One of which didn't torque down my lug nuts on my old STI..

I did send a message to Tim but just for PPG building recommendations for center diffs, but never got an answer. Not bashing him, he's got a lot of work to catch up on, and I'm sure he's absolutely swamped with getting caught up.

I actually really don't like it haha I like that it's very 90s but for how I want the car, it just isn't it. I do plan on wrapping it later on after it gets up and running and what not but that's for another time. Wiring is definitely new to me but I think I'm starting to getting the hang of it. Once you kind of force yourself to jump in, you tend to Learn fast!

 

[Anfurnyy]

300m output shaft shows up today.

Got my shop press and got that setup and re-organized my garage a little bit to make room for it. Don't judge me for my mess. My garage also has an INSANE concave to it so that's why there's 2x4s and wood blocked under everything against the wall..

 

[Anfurnyy]

Removed the compressor housing to drill and tap it for a NPT port for a boost reference for boost controller. I should be doing that within the next couple days.


I've wanted to utilize the knock sensor with this ECU and it's disabled from the Manufacturer by default. You need to solder a wire from a pin on the harness side to the PCB that goes into the ECU so I went ahead and did just that. I've used hot glue to glue the wire down at both solder joints and right in the middle as a stress relief. Never really soldered wires to a board before so hopefully it works.

 

[Anfurnyy]

Got a little more done yesterday. Drilled and tapped the compressor housing for a 1/8npt for boost reference. I used a 21/64th drill bit and Ace had the NPT tap in stock. Turned out absolutely perfect. I'm always nervous about tapping threads in things. Haven't done it much before.


Pinned and connected my knock sensor. It still has all of the factory ground shielding on it, however I did extend it a little bit to reach the knock sensor. There's about 8 inches of wire that isn't shielded so hopefully that doesn't cause an issue with false knock or interference. Now that I think about it though, the factory sensor didn't have a shielding on the sensor side either so it should be okay?


Loomed up from the igniter, and coil pack harness back to mid firewall. I'm not completely sold on how this is loomed yet. I might re-do it and try to give it a little more slack.

 

[Anfurnyy]

300m output shaft actually showed up on Friday. Confused it for another package. Funny how this looks almost identical, but holds quite a bit more torque.

My Jacks parts showed up as well. Got to work getting it all cleaned up and swapped out.


I pulled apart 1-2, and 3-4 hubs, cleaned them all brake cleaner and wiped them all off. I did the same with all the gears and hub sliders shafts etc. Replaced all the synchro keys, synchro springs and the synchro's them selves as well.

When replacing the keys on the 3-4 hub I noticed that the keys are slightly different, being the "short ramp" version rather than the "long ramp" that I pulled out. The height of them seems identical though. Weird. I double checked the order sheet to make sure I ordered the right ones and it seems like I did. The 1-2 keys are much longer.


Also I noticed that when swapping the synchro's out that they were different too. The old ones had 3 groups of teeth for the slider vs the new ones which had equal teeth all the way around. I believe these were the 1-2 synchro's here:


I had to get pretty creative getting some of the hubs pressed on, which was pretty frustrating but by far the most frustrating was 4th gear needle bearing sleeve. I tried everything from re-using the inner race of the old bearing as a spacer to just different sockets and extensions and just tried literally everything and no matter what I did i couldnt get anything to pass over the upper ledge of where the snap ring sits. I ended up just flipping the entire stack over and pressing the sleeve on against the bearing splitter which worked.

The next most frustrating thing was the upper tapered roller bearing on the input shaft. I verified that this was the same bearing as the one i pulled off (checking part numbers stamped on the inner races) but again no matter what I did it just got stuck on the lip just above the snap ring groove. I ended up heating the bearing up, Possibly too much and putting on. When i did this it literally just fell on, on its own and didn't even need to be pressed on. i did notice some slight discoloration of the bearing now but it seems to roll just fine still. Hopefully I didn't ruin in.


I've been referencing the service manual for the W5m33 transmission and I ended up tearing the intermediate shaft basically all the way apart because the book misprinted stating that a synchro spring was a snap ring... Anyways, once i get that put back together the input and intermediate shafts will be 100% done with assembly.


The roller bearing outer races on the bell housing side were tricky to get out. I used 2 pairs of 90* snap ring pliers and got them under the races and lifted the intermediate shafts out. It kinda just broke loose out of there and flew on the table.
The input shaft race i had to get a little more creative. Same concept, except I didn't pull it straight up. I bent the pliers back wards forcing the ends up and pushing the race up and outwards. I ended up using an old stake nut from the ends of the shafts to get some added height to finish pushing the bearing out. A few minutes later, it popped right out! No brute force or anything.



Replaced the input shaft seal while I was in there too.

Also replaced the magnet in the trans with a new Neodymium stronger magnet too.

 

[Anfurnyy]

I was able to get the gear stacks and bearings all pressed back together and dropped in temporarily as I do bearing preload. Also got the new shift forks installed and the double roll pins punched in.


Took a break from transmission stuff to kind of do a mockup of the manifold and see how different my intercooler piping is. It's definitely going to need changed. I'm also trying to decide whether or not to run this 2.5" or jump up to 3" piping as well.


I bought some releasable zip ties to use on my harness just to keep everything tidy as I mock it up. These are fantastic.


While I was cleaning up the harness I realized actually how little I have left before this thing COULD be running.

- Shim trans, get installed
- have intercooler modified for fitment around condenser
- have intercooler piping made
- have exhaust made
- finish loom mockup and reloom
- Front wheel bearings
- Fix can lambda (it's constantly reading .500 lambda)
- Modify turbo inlet to fit with filter
- Make/ Route Vacuum lines off manifold
- Make / route BCS lines

Doesn't anyone know which way the 3rd/4th gear hub slider faces? There's one side that slightly more tapered than the other. I vaguely remember reading that the more tapered side goes a specific way but I can't find the post anymore

 

[92AWDHX40]

Good progress man stick with it .

 

[1cleangsx]

I have to commend your courage for tackling the trans, I couldn’t do it , good for you brotha, I hope you get to shred that thing this year!

 

[Anfurnyy]

I have to commend your courage for tackling the trans, I couldn’t do it , good for you brotha, I hope you get to shred that thing this year!

Thanks! I've wanted to take apart this trans since the first drive but it just seemed too daunting. I guess I just decided to strap on a pair and get r done. Honestly thought It wasn't really bad at all.

I have a feeling I'll be able to but we'll see. Still lots of little finishing things to do

 

[Anfurnyy]

So finished up my bearing preloads and end plays. Here were my measurements:

Input shaft- .007 PRELOAD goal
Solder measurements: .045/.045
Shim thickness: .035in
New shim: MN168169 .0520

Intermediate shaft- .007-.009 PRELOAD goal
Solder measurements: .048/0465
Shim thickness: .041
New shim: MD712330 .0551

Front diff: .002-.0067 END PLAY goal
Solder measurements: .043/.0435
Shim thickness: .0385/.039
New shim: .004 (within spec)

Center diff- . 005-.007 PRELOAD goal
Solder measurements: .060/.059
Shim thickness: .052in
New shim: MD718530 .0657

Output pinion: .003-.005 PRELOAD goal
Solder measurements: .0575/.0575
Shim thickness: .057
New shim: MD724333 .0622

I was able to actually use Tims list of shims to find these on Amayama! I still need to measure the end play on the snap rings though.


Yesterday after work I busted out the wire wheel and cleaned off the previous flaking coat(s) of paint. The last coat I did failed because the trans was partially wet with brake cleaner/ water AND I used engine enamel which needs to be heated in order to cure correctly. I used caliper paint this time. It's not perfect but it looks much, much better now.


With my order of preload spacers, I also ordered a brand new OEM t-case dust cap and all new mid and end case bolts for the trans. This baby gonna shine.

Just a heads up for anyone ordering through Amayama to the US, they have to approve your order before you submit payment, and they emailed me to let me know there's import fees and what not as well. Not sure how much they are yet but I'll let You know.