Now after all those thread update dumps I am back up to date.
This evening I managed to locate and borrow an rx7 box from a bloody knowledgable and helpful fella called Stu. He also gave me a flywheel as I was looking for a ring gear to use…
Got home and first thing was to try my V6 clutch disc. It fits!!! Thats great as its a brand new exedy clutch that came fitted to eunos.
Next thing was to try the box onto the engine. Some ducks stood guard outside.
Wow- I cant believe how close it is! I levelled the engine up and then levelled the box and one main bolt hole lines up perfectly on the side.
The perimeter curve of the bellhousing follows very closely to the block curve and with some fettling and welding of some extra meat into the bellhousing I reckon it could be fitted up with out the need for a adaptor plate. An extra angle bracket could be bolted to the bottom of the block at the rear and then bolted to the bottom bellhousing holes. I will spend more time tomorrow evaluating it.
Another pleasant surprise was that the v6 ring gear is actually 290mm- not the 280mm I originally measured on the first engine looked over at the wreckers. The rx7 item is 300mm. So I need only to move the starter pinion in 5 mm to mesh. Hopefully this will be easy enough. The starter is centralised and located not by the bolts but a shoulder on the starter locating in the big hole. If I make the hole in the bellhousing bigger and then machine up a offset spacer ring it to centralise it where I want it.
The rx7 box also puts the starter motor almost spot on in the right place fore and aft in relation to the v6 ring gear…which is nice.
I remeasured the length of the engine and double checked where it will sit in the viva. Then checked the engine mount positions on the block and related them to the Viva crossmember. The mounts should sit about 50 mm in forwards of the centre line of the cross member. This means that they should be well clear of the steering column as it comes down to meet the rack. Again very lucky.
If the car was to be a super dooper race car I would move the box back and with it have the engine further back- there is enough room, maybe 90mm, between the heads and the bulkhead. This though would place the gearstick too far back, involve shortening the prop shaft, less area between bellhousing and the tunnel for exhaust pipes and necessitate moving the clutch master cylinder.
But as the car is not a race car I'm happy with the position.
Another sweet thing is that not needing the powersteering pump or the AC pump means I can loose the front pulley. I will adapt or make a new alternator bracket and run it off the rearmost pulley. It means I can loose the silly, heavy, bulky, ugly tensioner bracket. I tension the alternator the old fashioned way- by swinging it out. The smaller crank pulley will mean I will be slightly under driving the alternator- will this be a problem? The stock alt is a 90 amp item. I have no major drains on the battery though- the Viva being devoid of posh things like electric windows etc anyhow.
This lump of nasty can go..
I also got out from my arsenal ofd fancy tools my faithful lump of timber. This I used to work out how much room I have between the sump line on the engine to the underside of my bonnet.
Then worked out what space I will have on between the inlet manifold mounting face and the bonnet. About 190mm which is a fair amount of space to build something fairly nice- I want to build a manifold with quite long runners- similar in style to the Ford Mondeo BTTC cars of the 90's. (but cheaper..)
Looking forwards to seeing what you fellow Viva nutters think of al this...
curse word.
