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Robert560
Senior Member
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The recent dowel bolt discussion reminded me that I meant to make a "public service announcement" for those doing a Toyota 5 Speed conversion, as I did...
I'm not sure if they're all like this, but I discovered that my conversion bellhousing was NOT drilled for a close tolerance fit with the dowel bolts. This means that there was no alignment happening... they'd fit snug in the engine plate like they should, and then be sloppy within the bellhousing itself. This would result in the trans input shaft doing all the alignment work, into the bearing in the flywheel... and with the weight of the transmission hanging off the back, this would surely result in some side loading on the input shaft.
I'm not sure how critical it is on these kinds of cars, but I know with the '68 Camaro I had, anything more than a few thousands of misalignment was too much, and could cause shortened part life, excess bearing wear, etc. So I didn't want to take that chance...
I ended up making "circular shims" from some flat brass shim stock, sized to fill the gap between the bolt O.D. and bellhousing I.D. I used AN176 aircraft bolts in place of the dowel bolts (I was missing one of the original bolts), and fit it into the bore of the bellhousing perfectly. I had to take a few tenths off the bolt O.D. to get the fit to work (bolt held in drill, fine sandpaper). Then I just slipped the bolt with the shim into the bellhousing, and installed. The result was the dowel bolts doing what they are supposed to do - aligning the bellhousing to the engine plate, and therefore the trans input spline to the crankshaft.
So this is just FYI for anyone doing a 5 speed swap. You may want to take some measurements of the holes in your bellhousing prior to installing, to make sure you're installing with proper alignment.
Also FYI... the conversion otherwise was flawless. The car is absolutely fantastic to drive with that Toyota transmission in it. I took advantage of no longer using the overdrive switch on the dash to turn it into the switch for the driving lights I added... so I didn't have to add an extra switch somewhere on the dash and take away from the original appearance.
~Robert
I'm not sure if they're all like this, but I discovered that my conversion bellhousing was NOT drilled for a close tolerance fit with the dowel bolts. This means that there was no alignment happening... they'd fit snug in the engine plate like they should, and then be sloppy within the bellhousing itself. This would result in the trans input shaft doing all the alignment work, into the bearing in the flywheel... and with the weight of the transmission hanging off the back, this would surely result in some side loading on the input shaft.
I'm not sure how critical it is on these kinds of cars, but I know with the '68 Camaro I had, anything more than a few thousands of misalignment was too much, and could cause shortened part life, excess bearing wear, etc. So I didn't want to take that chance...
I ended up making "circular shims" from some flat brass shim stock, sized to fill the gap between the bolt O.D. and bellhousing I.D. I used AN176 aircraft bolts in place of the dowel bolts (I was missing one of the original bolts), and fit it into the bore of the bellhousing perfectly. I had to take a few tenths off the bolt O.D. to get the fit to work (bolt held in drill, fine sandpaper). Then I just slipped the bolt with the shim into the bellhousing, and installed. The result was the dowel bolts doing what they are supposed to do - aligning the bellhousing to the engine plate, and therefore the trans input spline to the crankshaft.
So this is just FYI for anyone doing a 5 speed swap. You may want to take some measurements of the holes in your bellhousing prior to installing, to make sure you're installing with proper alignment.
Also FYI... the conversion otherwise was flawless. The car is absolutely fantastic to drive with that Toyota transmission in it. I took advantage of no longer using the overdrive switch on the dash to turn it into the switch for the driving lights I added... so I didn't have to add an extra switch somewhere on the dash and take away from the original appearance.
~Robert
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