Electromans Type 4 conversion

[Piledriver]

Yes, it should be a close fit there.

[Electroman]

so I'm not over-thinking things, good. I'll make sure to add in some metal there once I get the whole shroud shaped better. thanks Pile

[Electroman]

Once again,
Its been awhile since I posted an update on this. I have been super busy lately, with the new job, birthday parties, holidays ect; that I haven't had much time at all to work on this.

I did final get a chance this weekend to get out and mess around with the rest of the tin work. Unfortunately I found something I had overlooked somehow. When I started designing this fan setup I wanted to get the fan mounted as close as possible to the case, to keep everything compact. Well when I was looking over everything yesterday I noticed that way the fan belt would be setting after leaving the fan pulley would put it very close to the case, so close that there isn't enough room to get the alternator and idler pulleys in there. It took me a few hours of just staring at the parts(wife was giving me weird looks for that one) but I think I found a solution. Unfortunately it looks like I will have to tweak the fan shroud I have been working on to get it to clear the fan properly once I get this all worked out.

For now I'm putting the tin work on the back burner while I get all the pulleys and the alternator setup. I have the crank pulley figured out, I just need to figure out the alternator setup. I'm looking for a small alternator, that about 55A or so. I'm thinking one for a 1988 Suzuki Samurai or the like. should be nice and small and do what I need. Time will tell.

[Electroman]

Thought it was time for an update.

I haven't gotten too much physical work done on the car. Transmission is still only half installed in the car, front is supported by some blocks of wood currently. I have come up with a design for the front transmission mount, need to pick up some super beetle front control arm bushings first to get that together. As far as the engine goes, I have been doing allot of figuring on paper to get a good idea for how I'm going to put this pulley system together. The plan is to get everything lined up without having to raise the height of the fan from where I currently have it mounted. I was planning on using a small alternator off a suzuki or a geo, those run about 50A or so, but after some math adding up the current load of all the electronics I have in the car 50A didn't seem like enough. My math showed that if everything in the car was at max current load at once I would need more like 80A. So I searched around online and ended up getting a rebuilt Bosch AL27X its a 90A about the size of a vanagon alt. A bit bigger than I was looking for but I'll feel safer with the extra current overhead. Alt should be here Monday. I also picked up a type 1 pulley that had been machined for use on a type 4 and a modified fan hub to go with it for a decent price. Now I just need to pick up one of those nice hidden type 1 trigger wheels from Mario and get the pulley machined for it. So all that's left is to figure out the idler pulley and get all of this stuff to fit.

So not much progress, but still pluggin away. Hoping to get some real work done this next week.

[Electroman]

Time for another update.

Again its been some time since I posted here, job stuff and general life keep getting in the way of my car. I have managed to put in some work here and there over the past few weeks and as of yesterday I got the front transmission mount finished (changed my mind again). Still have a long way to go with all of this but its one step closer. Below are some pictures of the front mount, please excuse the uncleaned cored welds.

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So now that that's finally done I can move forward to get the clutch cable sorted and finally the shifter. Still trying to piece together a few more parts to move forward with the cooling system build. More updates to come.

EDIT: Trying to get all of these pictures back after loosing photobucket.

[Electroman]

Quick update,

Got some work done today. Managed to get the rest of the welding done on the area above the transmission. Long story short I inadvertently made a few holes while gently massaging the metal to fit the transmission. Got all of that and the front transmission mount tabs cleaned up and painted. Then I started working on the clutch setup. Got the clutch cable support bracket that bolts to the transmission welded up and started working on the clutch tube. I also took a look at how the shift rod is going to fit in its new location in the tunnel, long story short the heater cable tubes are in the way. Need to get everything bolted back in place to see how bad they are going to interfear. Slow progress but still some progress.

[Electroman]

Been awhile since my last update, as usual been busy with work life ect. and not too much time for cars.

I have managed to get some work done though mostly clean-up stuff around the trans area. Got everything repainted, the clutch and throttle tubes moved, and welded up a cover for the hole where the shift rod passes. I did manage to start the transmission rebuild process; didn't get too far yet, had to reorder some parts as the company didn't ship them the first time I ordered. So with the transmission so far I got the case all cleaned up and painted.

Consider this a public notice, this is a pain in the butt, that whole process took me hours. It's not a perfect coat of paint or anything, actually its a pretty bad paint job, but it keeps the magnesium from corroding. I have managed to get the differential torn down, inspected and reassembled. Started to set up the differential bearing preload only to find out I need to get another in/lbs torque wrench as mine cant read low enough. So thats where I'm at right now, nothing really exciting going on yet just lots of prep wok. Hopefully I'll have more interesting things to report soon.

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EDIT: Trying to get all of these pictures back after loosing photobucket.

[Electroman]

TRANSMISSION REBUILD TIME!


Finally some progress with all of this.

The transmission is just about finished, still need to adjust the shift forks and put the whole thing together but besides that it is rebuilt. So I figured since I'm rebuilding this transmission anyway I might as well document the whole process to show everyone whats involved, and how simple to rebuild these Porsche transmissions really are.

First off a small disclaimer, I did not rebuild this transmission to be like new. This rebuild was all about getting the worn parts replaced and get everything back to a usable state. I should have replaced the bearings and a few other parts as well but those will wait till later.


I will start from the point after the case and all of the parts have been cleaned and inspected. I also put a coat of paint on the case to help protect it from any corrosion. From my previous posts I indicated some of the worn parts on this transmission. Namely first and second gears dog teeth, three of the synchro rings were trash and a few other miscellaneous parts. I was able to salvage usable replacements for everything except one of the synchro rings. So first thing was to play musical chairs with the dog teeth, to get good usable teeth on each gear. This job would be impossible if it weren't for the special tool for this job.

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In the above picture you can see first gear with its trashed dog teeth and both parts of the required tool. The larger part of the tool clamps onto the dog teeth allowing them to be pressed off of the gear as seen in the picture below.

I do not have a press so instead of beating on it with a BFH (probably not the best Idea), I chose to try a gear puller. This actually work very well for the job and made removing the teeth a very easy job.

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Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of putting the good teeth back on the gears, but I will do my best to explain how I did it.

First thing to note is that the inner side of the dog teeth have teeth (for lack of a better term) that engage in the same type of teeth on the gear. You can kind of see these in the below picture.

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These teeth along with the fact that the dog teeth are a press fit on the gear and that the factory deforms the top end of the gear to help hold the teeth on. When removing the teeth I did my best to not damage this deformation of the gear so the teeth would have the best chance of staying on.

When actually installing the teeth I placed the gear in the freezer to chill out for awhile. With the gear cold I heated the teeth up with a torch till fairly hot, I would say about 300 degrees or so. I didn't want to get them too hot. At that point with a gloved hand I dropped the teeth into place on the gear and tapped them lightly with a hammer to make sure they would go on straight (they just about fell into place). Then with a block of wood and a hammer, one swift whack and the teeth were in place. At that point just to make sure nothing moved, I clamped everything in place between two pieces of wood till it cooled. This same process was used on the other two gears that needed teeth swapped.

With all the teeth replaced with good usable parts I moved on to assembling the inner workings of the synchros. One of the things I wanted to do with this rebuild is upgrade the inner synchro pieces with the later improved parts. Later pieces have a larger anchor block and shorter brake bands, this change was done to improve the servo force out on the synchro ring as well as reduce the failure of the anchor block. In the picture below you can see the inner parts laid out.

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The above shows first gear; this brings me to another change I made. I used dog teeth from the 2 - 5 position rather than the 1st gear special teeth. This isn't really an upgrade in anyway, more of a way to use used parts so you don't have to buy the special and more expensive first gear teeth. There is one slight upgrade involved with this and that is the it does allow first to be synchronised in an up shift. You really never up-shift into first unless you're a bit fast going from neutral to first, but it can't hurt.

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The above is a picture showing the internal parts assembled, all of this is held in place by the large snap ring, which is a huge pain to install BTW. Next up was to start assembling the two shafts. I started with the input shaft, laying out all of the parts in order first.

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It's then just a matter of sliding each piece on in order in the right orientation, followed by the bearing and the nut that holds it all together.

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There is a special tool to tighten that nut on, basically its a super deep socket that goes over the end of the shaft. I just used a crows foot.

Once all torqued up, I verified that the shaft was still straight with a dial indicator in the usual manner.

Next up was the pinion shaft, this one takes a bit of math to calculate the shims used to set the pinion depth in conjunction with the gasket between the intermediate plate and the main housing. On my transmission I did not change out any parts that would make it needed to reset the pinion depth, but I chose to check the shims anyway.

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Etched onto the end of the pinion is a number that should match the ring gear, in my case 648, also is the adjusting distance. This adjusting distance along with some design specifications for the transmission gives you the size of the shim needed.

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R is the design specification for the pinion distance, from this, since our pinions deviation was N16, we add 0.16mm to the design specification. Giving us 63.36mm.

We then take the basic distance of the pinion from its design, 64.70mm and subtract from it the adjusting distance we just calculated. Giving us the thickness of the shim stack needed. This turned out to be exactly what the original shim stack on my pinion measured to so back on it went.

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Followed by the rest of the pinion shaft parts.



Next up, installing both shafts back into the intermediate plate.
First i removed the bearing retainer plate, made sure it wasn't worn out and re-torqued it down.



Then I meshed the gear sets, to help install these into the intermediate plate I used a big zip-tie to hold them together, not pictured.



The shafts were then inserted into the intermediate plate and pressed on the other half of the bearing races. At that point all that was left was to install first gear and torque the nuts down.



That's about the point were I started to get flaky with taking pictures. But next I finished adjusting the differential bearing pre-load, this is an easy process just a tedious one. Basically you install a set of shims under the tapered roller bearings, bolt it all together into the transmission housing and measure the torque needed to turn the differential. Then adjust and do it again till its right. So that's about where I sit now with the transmission. waiting on the last internal shift rod to arrive so I can set up the shift forks.

EDIT: Trying to get all of these pictures back after loosing photobucket.

[Electroman]

Its been awhile since I last added an update.

I finally managed to get the last shift rod I needed, took a bit longer than anticipated as there was a mixup with the order but eventually i got it. Setting up the shift forks is very straight forward. The 2-3 and 4-5 forks are the easiest, you just need to center them between the gears and torque them down. The 1 - R for is a bit harder, with this one you need to check the clearance between the fork and the reverse idle gear being sure to press the idle gear against it bearing. This one took a few tries, but all in all all three forks were aligned in less than 10 minutes. After that is was just final assembly. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of this process but I'm sure you get the idea.

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After everything was assembled I installed the transmission into the car for the final time.

Now after having bolted this transmission into the car what seemed like 100 times offer the course of fitting it into the car and making to mounts, I figured it would just slide right in no problem. I don't know what kind of world you guys live in, but apparently the world I live in things change size and shape on their own. I had to disassemble all of the trans mounts and half of the Kafer bar just to get it to slide into place, then assemble it all back onto the transmission in the car. Finally though the transmission is in the car and the axles are attached once and for all.

Once the transmission was in I moved on to the part of the conversion I hadn't entirely figured out yet, the shift linkage.

When I was researching about this conversion I read everything I could find from anyone who had already done it. A common theme I found with just about every one of them was that everything with the conversion when fine and the car drives great except its hard to shift into (insert gear here). With everyone of these conversions they seemed to be doing some crazy things with the shift linkage. The main problem with a transmission conversion like this, for those who do not know, is that the main shift rod on the Porsche transmission is about 5 inches lower in the car than the Volkswagen transmission.

With the factory setup from Volkswagen you had a basically straight shift rod running along the top of the tunnel from the front to the back of the car connecting the shifter to the transmission and all was good.

So now when you swap over to a Porsche transmission you have the shifter at the top of the tunnel and the transmission connection at the bottom of the tunnel. The most common solution I could find to this problem was that the individual would just put a big Z bend in the middle of the shift rod to lower the back of the rod down. This seems to be an easy solution on the surface, but it seems with the geometry of how the linkage moves it causes shifting problems, specifically between the different shift gates.

In my mind this is due to the bent rod now wanting to swing in a large arch at the back rather than just rotate, so the sifter movements don't translate as well. Not to mention, how are you going to get that shift rod back out to replace the shift bushings? Because of those two major problems I decided that bending the rod was not the solution.

I did also see people talking about adding two universal joints to the shift rod and more bushing to support them to achieve the same thing but without the problems of the bent rod. I can see how this would solve the shifting problems but again hw are you going to change out the bushings at a later date? Not to mention its kind of an overly complex solution to the problem. So to find a proper solution to this problem I asked myself, what would Porsche do?

At that point it became clear what needed to be done to make this work correctly. Looking at just about ever mid or rear engined car I could find that Porsche produced they used a simple straight shift rod. Exactly like it was setup from Volkswagen from the factory, its simple easy to maintain and it just plain works. With that figured out it became relativity simple to decide what to do. Moving the whole shift rod to the bottom of the tunnel is easy, just make a new shift rod bushing support, weld it to the bottom of the tunnel and there you go shift rod set up like it should be.

But this makes a new problem, this approach lowers the shift rod about 4 inches lower in the front of the car from where it used to be. So no stock or after-market Volkswagen shifter will work, nor will any Porsche shifter. There is only one shifter available for sale that I'm aware of that would even remotely work for this, and no offence to the guys at Bug at Five Speed but I refuse to pay that much for a shifter. So the decision was made, move the shift rod and design and build my own custom shifter.

So back to the car in question, I threw bucket in the car in the approximate drivers seating location and began to see how all of the controls sat. It quickly became obvious that from the factory the shifter is not in the best location, especially if you move the seating position back and lower it (I'm 6 foot 7 inches tall sooo). So with that noted and the fact that I needed to move the shift bushing and also that my clutch cable tube had at some point in the past broken loose, being repaired by bolting it down with a piece of exhaust clamp through the parking brake opening.

Soooo this happened...

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You ever have one of those moments where you look at something you just did and go what the hell am I doing?

Yeahhhh that happened. But the thought of shifting bliss and a properly operating clutch greatly outweighed it.

Once I had my Giant hole, I went to fix the clutch cable tube, good thing I cut the tunnel open as once I pulled that half exhaust clamp off the middle of the tube I discovered that all of the welds on the clutch tube were broken except for the one at the very back. So I re-welded the front and added two new support brackets and got it all welded back up.

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Then I moved on to locating the shifter, after a bunch of measurements I decided on a location and shortened the shift rod. I also added some adjust-ability to the shift rod just in case my measurements are slightly off. So a few cuts, a few nuts, and a piece of threaded rod and here you go.

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This is where I'm at right now, more updates to come.

EDIT: Trying to get all of these pictures back after loosing photobucket.

[trbugman]

While you are doing shift rod modifications, put a taper on the end of it so you can leave the split ring on the bushing when installing the shift rod. Take your threaded portion off and the shift rod should just slide in.

[BugUgly]

"moving the whole shift rod to the bottom of the tunnel"
An open-minded idea! The thought/dread of cutting open the tunnel probably keeps most people from thinking of this. It sure would have had me thinking "how do I thread this rod through here?"

[Electroman]

Taper on the end of the rod hmm that's an idea. Although after I shortened it it does seem to slide into the bushing I have ok right now. I'll have to take a look when I get back to it this weekend.

Bugugly. I know what your saying about moving the shift rod. I was originally trying to figure out how to do it without doing much cutting, but once I found the clutch tube loose and decided to move the shifter it was all over with.

[Electroman]

Well finally life has slowed down a bit and I have gotten motivated again to do some more work on this large project of mine.

Last I left off I had a big hole cut in the tunnel and was planning on moving the shift rod to the bottom of the tunnel, repairing my loose clutch tube, and building a custom shifter. Well as of this last weekend I did get the shift rod moved, the clutch tube repaired, and finally finished my shifter.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures taken of the shift rod, Ill take some this coming weekend, but I figured I should update this thread with some pictures of the shifter. I should note that the main rod of the shifter is temporarily a piece of threaded rod until I get a piece of aluminum to replace it, that being said on with the pictures.

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EDIT: Trying to get all of these pictures back after loosing photobucket.

[Clatter]

LOove this build!

Been watching this closely - would love to see your shift rod.

That shifter looks a lot like the Bug@5-speed one..

Don't know if you saw my shenanigans with two u-joints on TOS,
But how you solved the shift rod issue is of great interest to me!

I think I'm going to steal your shift-rod length-adjustment method.
My setup is an internal/external slider with a pinch-bolt dealio,
and could slip when driven in anger.

Thanks also for taking the time to show the trans guts.
Good on you for allowing the distraction of pics when performing such surgery.

[Electroman]

The shift rod itself is pretty simple, I just took the stock beetle rod bent it straight and cut it shorter. Welded a I want to say 1/2 nut in the end of it but it may have been a 12mm, the took the shift coupler end and welded a piece of threaded rod on it. As far as the support bushing on the shifter side. I just cut down the stock beetle part and welded it to the bottom of the tunnel, pretty simple. I will mention though to get the shift rod at the bottom of the tunnel like that I did have to remove the heater cable tubes as they run right where the shift rod now is. In hind sight I could have prolly cut the tunnel open and bent them out of the way. Oh well. Hopefully I'll have some time this weekend to tackle the plate to fill that big hole I cut. I'll try and take some more pictures of the bushing support ect on the soft rod.



As for the shifter the bug at 5 speed shifter was the basic inspiration for the design only mine doesn't have a reverse lockout(may need to add that later though).