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Alfa V6 + R380 + LJ70 into SJ
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simonallen
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1997 Lada Niva

PostPosted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 7:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

there doesn't look like there is much "luck" involved there to be honest mate....

just pure awesomeness!! Cool
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fat zuke
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 7:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

awsome work Cool cant wait for the rest of this build Very Happy
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nj111
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PostPosted: Thu May 03, 2012 2:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sorry if there's too much info here but it's for those that might consider a similar project.

Here's the original Alfa clutch, it's a pull clutch & rip off price so not what I want at all, but note how compact the pressure plate is in diameter, it's undercut around it's edge where the fixing bolts are.
To use a decent size clutch the same will have to be done with a new pressure plate otherwise the fixings will be off the edge of the flywheel.



Land Rover clutches are out, too big in diameter to be used or altered.

There's the option of throwing a lot of cash at a custom clutch company or modifying an existing clutch.
I went for the second option and it's a simpler process if a friction plate can be found with the same splines as the R380 g/box.

The Alfa friction plate was 231mm diameter and I reckon it requires a heavy duty clutch with a friction plate 230mm to 240mm O/D and a drive of 23 splines at 1" diameter to fit the LR gearbox splines.
Had a rummage through some old stock at friendly garage & found some Ford clutches may be ok.
Finally used 2.3 Sierra Sapphire diesel 1982-1987, (240mm friction plate) but if you're doing one of these conversions also have a look at the older Ford V6 clutches
including 3 litre Capri, 2.8/2.9 Granada and also 1600 petrol Transit as any of these may also do the job.

Sourced two heavy duty EBC branded clutches, decided to mod both.

First job is to take accurate mesurements of Ford Clutch ...bolt and Dowel positions using the mill as a coordinate measuring machine.



Same with the Alfa Flywheel



As I had two clutches to alter I made a fixture, which accepts both the Ford pressure plate and the Alfa flywheel.
It's a piece of ally plate which had a former life, so not all the holes are relevant. It's got a central spigot and a pattern of bolt holes around this.
That will centralise, hold down and orientate the Alfa flywheel. (cos one of the alfa flywheel bolts is positioned out of pitch).
The flywheel needs to be orientated for drilling as all the new holes must miss all of the old ones.
The fixture is also drilled & dowelled for the Ford clutch.
That way I can clamp it & sort it whilst the same fixture is on the mill.
The slots milled in X and Y directions are so that the fixture can be realigned on the mill....should more clutches be needed.



Here's the Ford clutch on the fixture & a slot drill providing some clearance for the cap screw heads in the new positions.



Then some drilling & reaming



6 new bolt positions and 3 new dowel positions. Alfa Flywheel has to be drilled to match.



Alfa flywheel being clocked to check it's exactly centralised on that fixture.



Bolt holes drilled and dowel holes drilled and reamed.



These spring loaded tap guides are handy as they ensure the taps go in dead vertical, saves annoying tap beakages.



Last edited by nj111 on Tue Aug 12, 2014 7:46 am; edited 8 times in total
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nj111
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PostPosted: Thu May 03, 2012 2:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's two clutches done. Total cost £65 the pair Very Happy and a few evenings work, but that's the hobby.

Now back to the drawing board as next job is to shorten the gearbox input shaft.

Clutch installed on flywheel:



Last edited by nj111 on Tue Aug 12, 2014 7:48 am; edited 2 times in total
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sbautos
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Joined: 12 Jan 2012
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PostPosted: Fri May 04, 2012 6:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

wow! Getting there mate. Are the input shafts interchangeable? Just wondering if a defender shaft may be short enough?
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nj111
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PostPosted: Fri May 04, 2012 7:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

sbautos wrote:
wow! Getting there mate. Are the input shafts interchangeable? Just wondering if a defender shaft may be short enough?

Good question! Sadly, although the bellhousings can be swapped around, the LT77 g/box input shafts will not fit R380 g/boxes. The R380 is a much stronger box and the hubs on the end of the input shafts are bigger. I'm fairly sure there's no short input shaft made for an R380 Crying or Very sad
But hopefully there will be one soon......
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baloo
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PostPosted: Fri May 04, 2012 8:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

nj111 wrote:
sbautos wrote:
wow! Getting there mate. Are the input shafts interchangeable? Just wondering if a defender shaft may be short enough?

Good question! Sadly, although the bellhousings can be swapped around, the LT77 g/box input shafts will not fit R380 g/boxes. The R380 is a much stronger box and the hubs on the end of the input shafts are bigger. I'm fairly sure there's no short input shaft made for an R380 Crying or Very sad
But hopefully there will be one soon......


did they not fit the R380 to the later years of the LDV convoy which has a short bellhousing which would mean a short input shaft is available off the shelf or at least at the breakers yards
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gp7186
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Joined: 09 Dec 2008
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1991 Suzuki Samurai

PostPosted: Fri May 04, 2012 8:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The LDV pilot uses an r380 gearbox thats what i used for my diesel conversion i have the engine and gearbox out now if you would like any measurements taking

thanks gaz
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nj111
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PostPosted: Fri May 04, 2012 9:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

gp7186 wrote:
The LDV pilot uses an r380 gearbox thats what i used for my diesel conversion i have the engine and gearbox out now if you would like any measurements taking

thanks gaz


Many thanks for your help here. Could you roughly measure the distance from the gearbox end of bellhousing i.e. iron face of the gearbox, where the dowels are, to the end of the input shaft?
Like in the pic below Just a rough idea with a few mm would be great!
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gp7186
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PostPosted: Fri May 04, 2012 11:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Right the input shaft is slightly different as it has a locating/centreing spigot much smaller than the discovery one its 12mm OD x20mm long. the size you requested is 180mm from the gearbox cast face to the end of the larger splined section of the shaft

thanks gaz
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nj111
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PostPosted: Fri May 04, 2012 12:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

gp7186 wrote:
Right the input shaft is slightly different as it has a locating/centreing spigot much smaller than the discovery one its 12mm OD x20mm long. the size you requested is 180mm from the gearbox cast face to the end of the larger splined section of the shaft

thanks gaz

I greatly appreciate your help, will see how this measures up.
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baloo
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PostPosted: Mon May 07, 2012 2:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

brand new and un used 2wd R380 gearbox rusting away in the shed Rolling Eyes


shafts appears to protrude about 160mm
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nj111
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PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2012 7:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

baloo wrote:
brand new and un used 2wd R380 gearbox rusting away in the shed shaft appears to protrude about 160mm


That is very short,in fact too short if the 160mm is measured from the iron face of the box, (i.e. rear of bell housing) but interested to know what would that have fitted? as it looks like it's got the same bell housing as the 200 Tdi Defender one that I used. Thanks, Nick
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sbautos
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PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2012 11:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

they put landy engines in freight rover 400's /ldv convoy befor they switched to ford power. . .
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nj111
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PostPosted: Fri May 11, 2012 7:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There are more variations on the R380 than I thought, but I haven't found quite the right length input shaft. LDF Pilot came close but was still 20mm too long.
If I'd done more research on shaft lengths I could have made the bell housing adaptor plate 20mm thicker and used an LDV input shaft but would have added slightly to the overall length of engine/tranny.

The input shaft is the last item to be removed from the gearbox.
In short, the ally rear housing is removed first, then mainshaft and layshaft are extracted from the main casing together.

With access to a small lathe and some standard pullers then to dismantle an R380 it's not necessary to buy any of the special tools referred to in the factory overhaul manual
(Manual can be downloaded free).



The input shaft is in the lathe. The splines held in a standard 25mm dia 5C collet & hex adaptor, otherwise a home made split collet would have held it accurately.
It's running dead true, no deflection on the DTI. The other end is supported with a centre.


The shaft is tough, with some hardening to the outer skin
but not too hard to part off with standard tooling.


After parting off, the splined end is drilled and tapped to accept a threaded stud (cut from an M14 high tensile cap screw)
but it also has been bored for a spigot to locate both parts concentrically when screwed together. There's also a weld prep.


The other half is machined to match but harder to hold.


Here's the difference between a standard input shaft and the shorter one, now ready to weld.
There'll be distortion during TIG welding and this will have to be corrected before the box is assembled.


I may be proved wrong but at the moment I'm not concerned about the strength of the modified shaft as this is common practice in the world of tractor pulling,
often with an unthreaded stud at the joint & just relying on the weld.
In that application, with huge amounts of torque, transmissions are seriously abused.
Their methods of altering input shafts can often be a bit agricultural, but even then, it's not normally the input shaft that fails first. I've seen the splines twisted into a helix before the weld lets go.
After straightening, the input shaft was also turned down on the end as it needs to fit into a bush which will be made to fit into the end of the Alfa crankshaft.
Leaded bronze seemed a reasonable material to use for the bush, where lack of lubrication will most likely occur.

The original R380 short "Front Cover" with oil seal pictured here, is not suitable and must be substituted with the longer one from an LT77 gearbox.


Note, the LT77 one requires a gasket, whereas the R380 front cover used silicon. Also the LT77 cover doesn't have the extra step machined to accommodate the retaining wires
fitted to the outside of the taper roller bearing bearings. This doesn't matter as the retaining wires are only there for ease of assembly.

In swapping front covers I found a difference in the machining depths for the bearing outers. This will require the mainshaft and layshaft shims to be altered, as detailed in the Factory Repair Manual.
There must be 0.5 to 2.5 thou of end float in both of these shafts.

There's a Gotcha here due to the difference in the thickness of these castings which means the original bolts will screw down into one of the gears. The bolts need to be shortened by about 2mm.



In my case, to save stripping the box again and altering all the shims I put the Front Cover casting up on the borer and sorted the depths to give the correct end float that way.
It could also be done in the lathe or on a mill with small boring head.



Last edited by nj111 on Thu Oct 02, 2014 4:14 pm; edited 6 times in total
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nj111
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Joined: 15 Dec 2010
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PostPosted: Fri May 11, 2012 7:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The box is rebuilt vertically. After gearbox assembly the input shaft was clocked again and found to be running within 0.001" which should be ok.







It seems my £99 gearbox had already been rebuilt, I'm told it's got the later baulk rings so must have been recon at some point.
So I've got away with changing two bearings and the seals and the rest looks good.
But, buying a cheap g/box was risky as the parts can get expensive to go through one of these.

Here it's together. The stock Land Rover clutch release bearing seems about the right thickness,
but the pushrod length from the slave cyl can always be altered to suit.



Last edited by nj111 on Tue Aug 12, 2014 7:57 am; edited 3 times in total
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GVstu
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PostPosted: Fri May 11, 2012 9:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't have the skills for any of this but by god I like reading about those who have. This is such an interesting thread I can't keep away from it, even if I'll never build anything like it good engineering and a job that's well done is always worth looking at, many thanks for such a comprehensive write-up.
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fletch
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PostPosted: Sun May 13, 2012 4:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

WOW what great work; your very skilled and nice of you for sharing

Good thread

Thanks
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Stal1878
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1990 Daihatsu Fourtrak

PostPosted: Sun May 13, 2012 6:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is truely amazing.
I have never seen a build thread like this before, great work.
Thank you so much for sharing this.
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sbautos
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2012 7:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

shame you couldnt get a shortend shaft but youve made on perfectly. Keep up with the right up, it beats reading the paper on the loo anyday! Lol
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nivapilot
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2012 8:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is just sheer engineering PORN.......love it....... Applause
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nj111
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PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2012 8:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks to all for your encouragement, there are some significant issues to overcome yet though!
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nj111
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PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2012 11:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thinking about offering up engine and transmission to the chassis. So I needed to sort out the engine mountings, but of course the motor was in a FWD car so the mounts were in totally the wrong places.

In the 80's this engine was produced as a 12 valve, and was conventionally orientated in a rear wheel drive transaxle car. (Alfa's GTV6).

Before I started the project I'd hoped the block would be unchanged from those days and so thought there may still be some flanges cast into the sides of the block where the engine mountings used to be.
(Note: Block changed during 2005 so later ones totally different).

On what will be the near side of the engine it's good news, as there are even three studs screwed in where the engine mounting would have been, yet these studs serve no purpose in front wheel drive vehicles.
Nothing was fixed to them.
Perhaps they were used during production or handling of the engine in the factory? They are still shown in the factory overhaul manual as the mounting points to support the engine on for a rebuild.


The other side is not quite so simple. Underneath this aluminium casting, which is a combination of rear engine mount, oil cooler & oil filter mount, there's a triangular bolt pattern, it's to the left of the cluster of holes & studs.
This was the original engine mounting position. But the oil filter is now set back about 70mm, covering and bolted to that original engine mount.


Decided to machine a piece of ally to relocate the oil filter. The filter must still be set back otherwise it'll foul the back of the alternator, but must not set back enough to cover those original engine mounting holes.
This part therefore needs an offset port arrangement for flow and return of oil to and from filter.

Fisrtly, a measure up of the original casting which held the filter and engine mount.



Then there was that big circular offcut from when I made the bell housing adaptor. It's 40mm thick which is about right.


This needed quite a few roughing and finishing cutters, drills and reamer for dowel holes.




Tapping (M20 fine) for the oil filter central stud.


Turning it over, locating it on the dowel holes previously drilled. It's bolted and dowelled to an aluminium fixture, ready to machine the reverse face.



Last edited by nj111 on Sat Jan 25, 2014 3:07 pm; edited 4 times in total
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nj111
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PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2012 11:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

At this stage I made an error on the mill and machined both the ports together so no oil would have gone to the filter.
Luckily that ally offcut was big enough to have another go this time with brain properly engaged. Here's the second one machined correctly



Now being drilled to connect the ports. Where this cross hole was drilled it was then counter bored and threaded for a blanking plug.
This port could be used for an oil flow input to the filter from an external pump, if the engine ever becomes dry sump in the future.



and the finished item:



Here it's fitted and the oil filter is now set back about 20mm but that's just enough to clear the back of alternator.
And those three tapped holes are now available for the engine mounting.
It's been a bit of a performance just to reveal the mounting but no real cost involved.




Notice here the stock manifold, with Alfas you don't have to spend cash on improved gas flow.


You can of course improve things, if your target is 400hp from a normally aspirated engine, but for most purposes Alfa's have always breathed quite well. Certainly for the last 40 years.


Last edited by nj111 on Sat Jan 25, 2014 3:08 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Blue dragon
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PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2012 3:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Truely great work. We are all enjoying this thread. The machining work is simply fantastic to behold. Very Happy
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neil norris
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PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2012 6:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

keep up the good work chap Wink
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Stal1878
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PostPosted: Fri May 25, 2012 7:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thats an impressive exhaust manifold for a stock unit.
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smokeyjoe
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PostPosted: Mon May 28, 2012 7:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Stunning work...

This has to be the best example of Men in Sheds engineering ever...

Keep it coming.

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rockwatt
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PostPosted: Mon May 28, 2012 10:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

smokeyjoe wrote:
Stunning work...

This has to be the best example of Men in Sheds engineering ever...

Keep it coming.


That's no shed ! That's a fully equipped machine shop Smile
I'd love that vertical borrer, (next perchase when I've moved and got more room)

Very nice machineing mr, puts me to shame with my mediocre mill and lathe!
I hope as much detail goes into the rest of the build.

Strange choice on the gearbox ! I would have been more inclined to choose something from the landcruiser stable.

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andy4w
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PostPosted: Mon May 28, 2012 1:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes Rich, must be nice to have the space and knowhow to do work like that ..............and not a fag packet in sight Wink Smile

Andy
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