Hello.
Some garage action happened at Benis again, this time with the Swift. DrGrip kindly arranged an engine (and half a car with it) purchase for me in Berlin earlier and after new year in Netherlands with some Finalgear people I headed to Berlin to pick up everything with kind help of Beni as well as thomas, for providing us with more economical way of doing a short 1200km roadtrip..
Seems like I was a bit preoccupied with the whole project, so I didn't actually take any pictures of all stuff Grip managed to get. Unfortunately one key thing was still missing, being the wire loom that connects engine electrics with the ECU. The guy selling the engine claimed the original loom would suffice, so I thought I'd give him the benefit of the doubt. Once I got both engines to a same place it was clear that this wasn't going to happen. Even GTis have varying loom depending on model year. So the engine swap was out for now, but we put the GTi gearbox in at least, to shorten the silly gearing it has as stock.
At the "shop", getting ready for some work
Once again, my picture coverage is rather nonexistent, as I was (surprisingly) busy working on the car.
GTi gearbox (left) being worked on. The previous owner seemed to think the oil goes outside the gearbox as well..
Not surprisingly, working on a new car the disassembly took like 4x the time it took to put things together again. Apart from some typical issues, like broken thread on exhaust manifold and lock pin issues with tie rod end.
After some re-threading and new bolts for the exhaust
And failed attempts to drill out remains of the old lock pin
We got a nylock nut there, like it should've been from the start.
While tackling this Beni managed to stab himself with the drill, and as we were so busy making the tie rod end work, we might've forgot to tighten the wishbone to the hub on that side..
That resulted in a rather interesting first test drive and a minor oil spill as the drive shaft detached from gearbox.. At least everything that has been worked on has been checked like 20 times now..
Also did some rust prevention while at it.
Before
After. Note how well the cleaned new gearbox fits there..
This is how you fill a gearbox, right? You might be surprised to know that we used a slightly different method, but let's keep the image of doing it like this..
Official notes of engine&gearbox oil change
And some extra stuff we couldn't find a place for
(This might have something to do with the fact we had spare wishbones and hubs we used)
Also, all important standing around, doing nothing -circles from Saturday. There might be a time lapse video of this at some point.
Some scaffolding locked us in to the garage, so test drive will have to wait still.. But still, big thanks to Joe and Beni. It was fun to work on cars with friends for a change.