So help... the plan was to put the gears and all into the s80 box alongside the stock lsd. that didnt work on account of the the ring gear being larger than the one on the open diff s4c box. the thought to swap the ring gear came up, but the bolt pattern is different. yay. so now the plan is to put the 2nd thru 5th gears onto the s80 shafts and make a frankenstein trans.

will it work? or will the shafts be a different diameter or something unlucky?

halp

 

If you want 2nd gear you need to swap the mainshaft and 1st gear, and shim the mainshaft.

 

so... ive swapped 2nd-5th(s4c gears) onto the main and counter shafts of the s80 and it seems to be ok. moves smoothly and shifts into gears on the bench.
i put the reverse idler gear in there instead of the s80 one as well
whats this about shims for the mainshaft?

 

You need to use the matching mainshaft for the 1st and 2nd gears. If not you'll likely have pitting and eventual breaking issues down the road.

 

so, the s80 main shafts wont work with the s4c gears on it??? ive gotten to this point after trying other options as mentioned above. i would have used the s4c shafts, but the gear on the s80 lsd didnt jive with the s4c parts. everything went on nicely and moves smoothly when i swapped the s4c gears over...

tell me bout what shims and where they need to go to make this combination work for the long run please.

 

yeah. at this point i need to put this thing back together and get ready for an event on the 22 of this month. sept. if it is a matter of getting some shims and re opening this and putting some parts in that wil make the car go for a longer time i like it. please tell me what to put where..

 

The shim is in the trans case and the thickness is how you control the clearance. It requires specialty tools to measure it. The steps are laid out in detail in the Helms manual. I suggest taking your transmission to a professional to have it properly assembled before putting any use on it.

 

i understand what the shims will do, im just wanting to know where to put em.. and i realise it is more involved than that too. at this point professional help isnt available.

bit of a bummer looking for help from the internet. sometimes advice is what you need and other times you need a set of hands.

 

that might not sound all right. i guess im just curious, though not surprised that the gears might fit the shafts and then not work properly. where is the problem in the combination really? the space between the gears? the distance from gear to gear across the shafts? it seems too good to be wrong. granted the finished product isnt perfect, but for what ive started with it seems better.

illuminate some knowledge on me

 

A gear is made up of two gears, one counter and one main. Once used they are a matched set that develops its own wear pattern. When you use a used main and counter that aren't from the same matching set you will likely run into wear problems. So you need to change the mainshaft so 1st and 2nd gear are matched sets. A mainshaft, the hubs and collars can all have variances in their length, combined with variances in the case and bearings and that is where the clearance change is from.

 

thats a good answer. thank you good water.

i guess at this point we will hope for the best. its gotta last for a while. not the optimal combination, yes, but how long it will last in this combination will have to be seen.

the trans moves smoothly in all gears which is a good sign.if it i makes it through a rally then this is a huge success. anything after that will be bonus.

i guess that im always skeptical on an answer like the " seek professional help" one is that when i studied auto tech, the only way that we were taught to fix something is with new parts. that is always the best option, yes. there have though been alot ove vehicles slapped together with rubbbish parts that have gone very far down the road with little issue. so. i will agree that a gearset will wear together in a way that makes it a matched set, and changing that un matches things which will lead to new wear patterns. which could be bad. but in this case who will really know how long it will last.

i guess my original question was more around " will it fit"? when i tried to swap the complete gearsets and shiift forks directly over, it did not work. most certainly so. but in this combination it sorta does. fingers crossed that it doesnt just dump out in a load on my garage floor.
and i do thank you for your help