More trials and tribulations but going in the right direction again.
Had a 3 day weekend off work so I spent all three days working on the bug. Friday I spent tearing the torsion bars out and installing the new coilover setup. It took a little more work than I anticipated, the lower 1/2" adapter standoffs were a real pain to get into the trailing arm but they're torqued to spec. Right now I still have the trailing arm bushings in place and I'll switch to a uniball setup later. On the upper mounts and cup brace I had to widen the holes out to 1/2" for the new upper bolts. The coilovers are QA1 units with 7" springs but really need 9" or 10" springs, and they are 16 way adjustable in rebound only.
With the suspension done on friday I could get down to the motor and tranny on saturday. I had some help and we were able to get everything out of the car pretty quick.
A closer shot of the new tranny from rancho. Single side cover late IRS case, super diff, albins chomoly gears, electron beam welded gear hubs, pro synchro rings, and steel shift forks. It's got a 2.90, 1.86, 1.28, .90 with a 3.88 R&P good for over 160mph at 8000rpm if I have enough HP to push the car through the air.
Got the tranny in, replaced the rear main seal with a new double rear main setup a lot of racers are switching to. It's two seals as thick as the normal single rear main seal. Buttoned everything back up, got the motor in and fired it up. Once it was hot it had more leaks than before we took it out. I was ready to cry because at that point the sun was setting and we had been working on the car all day. But after closer inspection I noticed it was an oil gally plug (AN allen head plug) that was leaking, and sure enough it was loose. So come sunday motor came out yet again, tightened up the galley plugs front and rear put it all back together and no more leaks, almost. I still have small drips coming from the valve covers but the rest of the block is finally dry.
There's only a couple of things left on the short list before dyno time and it's nothing major. Shift rod bushing, better throttle return springs and trim the fender and rear apron to clear the turbo.
In the course of the weekend I broke my big torque wrench, broke a pressure plate bolt off into the flywheel and had to drill it out, got covered in more gas, oil and moly grease than I could scrub out, and collected more scrapes and scratches than a five year old with a new bike, but I think the end result was worth it.