Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Tranmission Clutch and Driveshaft - 

Here are the elements I used to link the stock Roadster clutch master to the Miata clutch slave. Clockwise from left: Miata slave; custom bent 10" length of 3/16" steel brake tube with 10mm x 1 inverted flare fittings; stock Miata clutch line upper bracket; stock Miata rubber clutch line; stock Miata clutch line lower bracket (modified). I also modified the very tail end Roadster hard line, as described below.
I cut the flare off the end of the stock Roadster steel clutch line and removed the stock fitting (shown above), replacing it with an inverted flare fitting with 10mm x 1 metric threads (shown below). Then I made a new double flare to replace the one I cut off. Metric double flare fittings work on the same sizes of tubing as SAE flare fittings. Very convenient for this sort of puzzle.
Here is a view of everything in place. The black Miata bracket bolts to the block; the gold Miata bracket bolts to the stock Roadster clutch bracket on the frame rail.
Here is the driveshaft, as grafted (Miata nose, Datsun tail) by Laszlo (Les) at Driveshaft Masters. He's a real nice guy who seems to have an interest world of his own set up in Harbor City, CA. The driveshaft was done in a day and fits great. We'll see how it spins....
Filling the transmission with oil is no fun, albeit no less fun than on a stock Miata. I don't recall how not fun it was with the stock Datsun. I'm thinking very. If you don't have one of these handy pumps, you're torturing yourself even more than you need to.
Here is the car moving under its own power for the first time in more than a year. Just a little back-and-forth to make sure the clutch and transmission were working properly. Aside from the exhaust "leak" and filterless intake, it was spooky quiet under power. I could get used to that.

No comments:

Post a Comment