Quaife bellhousing on Ford block
- Thread starter bryanf
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Good morning Bryan. A very easy solution and one I've had to do before is to step grind the dowels. Get a very accurate dimension from Quaife of the bellhousing hole. Then using a whirly gig in a surface grinder you can accurately grind the reduced diameter to perfection. If you can't find a machine shop locally to do it, I'll order up some dowels and grind them for you and send them to you free of charge. Feel free to email me you have my address.
Regards Brian
Regards Brian
BHJ has a very nice fixture for correcting misalignment. You could easily make corrections with it. I have several BHJ fixture, but unfortunately not this one. ALL of their tooling and fixtures are of the highest quality from my experience with what I have purchased. They are a little pricey, but so is destroying a transaxle, seized clutch or possibly taking out a crank thrust bearing. In the past, I had a buddy of mine do this for me. But, unfortunately he passed away some time ago and no one seems to know what happened to a lot of his equipment.
www.bhjproducts.com
Here is a previous post on the subject also.
Regards Brian
BHJ Products
BHJ Products high performance engine builder tooling and harmonic dampers.
Here is a previous post on the subject also.
bellhousing alignment
My CAV GT40 has been suffering with difficult gearchanges and clutch disengagement problems for a while especially when driven hard. Recently I decided to pull the Renault 21T transaxle out of the car and check the one piece bellhousing for concentricity and was horrified to discover that it was...
www.gt40s.com
Regards Brian
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I personally think you will have a difficult time finding a brass sleeve with a .460 id and a .500 od . .020 a side isn’t much. At any rate you don’t want to drill the bellhousing. A drill bit will bite in and give you a out of round hole that will more than likely be oversized. Then you will have excessive clearance allowing for a out of center input. If you give me the actual dimension of the bellhousing dowel holes, I will make you a reamer up that will pilot off the existing hole keeping the reamer straight allowing for a properly dimensioned hole.
The choice is yours, I just wanted to provide you with another option.
Regards Brian
The choice is yours, I just wanted to provide you with another option.
Regards Brian
There gets to be quite a bitof variation between stock block vs dart vs world etc so even if every one of quaifes bell housings is right on the money variation block to block can be enough to cause you to have to go to offset dowel pins or make alignment corrections one way or another.
The precision machine shop at Psycle Racing made me these two perfect-fitting stepped dowel pins.
This was made difficult because not only were the two dowel pin holes in the bellhousing smaller than Quaife told me they were (0.485"), their sizes differed by about 0.001".
Here is what my dial indicator showed:
So it looks to me like the bellhousing needs to move up about 6 or 7 thousandths.
I could ream the holes to 1/2" and use off-the-shelf .007"-offset dowels, or have some offset stepped dowels made.
This was made difficult because not only were the two dowel pin holes in the bellhousing smaller than Quaife told me they were (0.485"), their sizes differed by about 0.001".
Here is what my dial indicator showed:
So it looks to me like the bellhousing needs to move up about 6 or 7 thousandths.
I could ream the holes to 1/2" and use off-the-shelf .007"-offset dowels, or have some offset stepped dowels made.
Interesting that the hole is slightly egg-shaped. You might try torquing all the housing-to-block bolts.
That got my attention too. They are torqued carefully and evenly.
I am currently fighting this exact same battle and once you ream the holes in the bell housing out to .500 there is so little material between the Ford pin and the Chevy pin that the bore will start to egg shape after it is test fit a couple times. That’s why I ended up turning some plugs for the Chevy pins and pressing them in.
That's a concern of mine too even though Olthoff told me it's nothing to worry about. So if I do ream the holes rather than having some offset, stepped dowel pins made, I will do the same, at least on the left side where it's so close.
Doc Watson
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The reamer will be slightly tapered so take it slow and check often... I have a really boring video of me reaming a hole (keep it clean!!)
So the inimitable Brian Kissel made me not one but two solutions. He made two offset stepped dowel pins and in case these didn't work for some reason, he completely set me up to ream the bellhousing holes to 1/2" with a four-step reamer, plugs for the 5/8" Chevy dowel pin holes, and even a pair of .007" offset 1/2" dowels. All of the parts he made were very impressive and I could not have asked for more.
The dowel pins fit perfectly in the block and in the two different-size holes in the bellhousing. And once I figured out which way they needed to face (duh) I ended up within 0.001" of perfect alignment.
Brian's help and generosity are the perfect example of what makes this an awesome community and I can't thank him enough.
The reamer is now available for anyone installing a Quaife bellhousing. Just let me know!
The dowel pins fit perfectly in the block and in the two different-size holes in the bellhousing. And once I figured out which way they needed to face (duh) I ended up within 0.001" of perfect alignment.
Brian's help and generosity are the perfect example of what makes this an awesome community and I can't thank him enough.
The reamer is now available for anyone installing a Quaife bellhousing. Just let me know!
Glad it worked out for you.
Regards Brian
Regards Brian
