Real tech discussion on design, fabrication, testing, development of custom or adapted parts for Pontiac Fieros. Not questions about the power a CAI will give.
That kit I bought off Ebay came in, it's from a company called High Gear.
It's got Timken bearings and National seals. Their Ebay store lists it for $270, with blocker rings included.
Their part # for the kit TRK-550ws.
800-323-6211 www.highgear.com
The tranny from the 80 Beretta, was that from a Quad 4? I think those are the same gears I have on mine. I know my FDR is 3.61, and the other gear ratios look familiar.
I got my kit from the same place but I ordered it for the later model Getrag when the name was changed to NVG-T550. I got the same parts.. Look closely.. not all the bearings are Timken. Some are Koyo, Nachi, SKF, and L&S..
Yes it does come with a brand new detent housing cover.
My rebuild kit was $244 shipped. I just placed a minimum bid on the auction (the buy it now was $275, minimum bid was $225) and won it.
It looks like people didn't know about them before.. so the price is going to go up. I placed a minimum bid on the one that was listed for the "282" hoping to get it for that price.. but it rocketed up higher than the buy it now price, to over $300. However, I got a "second chance" offer from the seller for my final bid ($275) after it ended. I had already won the kit I ended up getting, so I declined. I wonder if he had a buddy bidding up the auction to see how high it would go. It was a private auction, so no way to tell.
$300 is still cheap, considering that when GM had the parts, they came to nearly $1000.
Did yours have the 0.80 fifth or the 0.72?
I put the shafts/clusters back together today. The blockers rings were in excellent condition, so I just left them. I think the box had been rebuilt shortly before the car went to the yard. The rebuilder made a mistake and didn't press the 5th gear & 4th gear race far enough onto the input shaft. Because of that he didn't have quite enough space for the snap ring at the end and had to pound it in. We stoned down the burrs on the shaft and were able to press it together all the way and the snap ring fell into place just as it should have.
To heat the heat shrink components, we got a $20 electric deep fryer at WalMart. I has a basket with a handle that sticks up above the edge of the pot, so I could put the parts in the basket, pour in a couple of quarts of ATF, set the thermostat for 250 and let it go. I used a laser temp probe to double check and ended up having to turn it up to 280 on the stat to get a true 250, but that's not bad for accuracy. When I needed one of the parts, I could just lift the basket out of the fryer and grab it with a shop towel and didn't have to reach down into the hot oil with pliers or anything gimmicky like that. It was great. That thing is definitely going into my Getrag tool kit.
The Dark Side of Will wrote:
To heat the heat shrink components, we got a $20 electric deep fryer at WalMart.
The only part i remember requiring heating to fit was the set of gears on the input shaft 3/4? whichever 2 gears are together. What other parts did you need to fit using heat?
Were your needle bearing carriers metal? Or plastic with a slice to slide over?
In addition to the 3-4 output cluster, the manual specifies the 5th gear input and the 2nd gear race. I also heated the 4th gear race because that's part of where the previous technician screwed the pooch and galled the journal a little bit.
My needle carriers were metal. The ones I took out were plastic. I got some of the last parts from GM, though. Not sure if they're still available. I'm sure it doesn't make a hill of beans difference in performance, but the plastic ones seem very ready to let go of their needles when dropped.
The Dark Side of Will wrote:
When you open it, can you get some pics of the friction surfaces of the blocker rings?
Sorry, after reading up about the rebuild procedure, I called my buddy Bill over at Coast to Coast and asked him to do it for me. I dropped everything off to him today. I don't have access to a hydraulic press, and I'm already working on a half a dozen other projects getting ready for the swap next week.
Series8217 wrote:
I got my kit from the same place but I ordered it for the later model Getrag when the name was changed to NVG-T550. I got the same parts.. Look closely.. not all the bearings are Timken. Some are Koyo, Nachi, SKF, and L&S..
Hey Will, what's the idea behind heating the stuff in oil/liquid? Why not just heat them in an oven or even over a stovetop?
Any of you guys have to adjust the shims for the diff yet? I remember reading on P.F.F. a while back that the shims weren't readily available, but there was some other application that they got some that would work from, I want to say some mopar stuff.
I got the Kent Moore tool used to select the proper shims (essentially a bunch of spacers made to assemble everything with enough gap that you can get in there and measure the clearance with a feeler gauge, then properly select the shims to get the appropriate clearance. I haven't used it yet, got in on ebay long ago and saved it for a rainy day. Anybody else got any cool tools for rebuilding the Getrag? Maybe we could combine toolsets to help each other out, a tool loan type of setup, so anybody could do a "proper" Getrag rebuild with the tool set and a hydraulic press.
You can use chrysler shims. Do a search for getrag threads. I think I have one called: "DOHC: 1, Isuzu: 0", or something like that. There is info in there.
So Will, you never said why you heated them in oil instead of free air in the oven/whatever. What's the deal with that, just trying to speed up the process?
Anybody have any more cool assembly/disassembly tools for the Getrag? The service manual has a few that would be handy to have, but obviously not required to get the job done.
I scanned in the whole Getrag portion of the '88 Service manual into a PDF file. I haven't seen this around on the net, so I figured I'd share; actually, I saw Rodney Dickman is *selling* copies of that service manual portion...wtf? Anyway, if anybody has some server space they'd be willing to host the file on, it would be handy reference for everybody that already has a manual but just wants an electronic version of it. You know, for backup. It's about 20mb, good enough quality that you can print it out on 8.5"x11" paper and it comes out clear, I think I did 300 dpi.
