Rode the struggle bus today. Those of you who are machinists will be saying “yeah duh!”
Transmission adapter plate came back fresh from anodizing today. Unwrapped it like it was Christmas to find… instead of gold, it was brown. The anodizer had told me that Type III hard anodizing comes out a shade or two darker than normal Type II… but assured me it would just be “darker gold”. Not much that can be done now, it’s a precision part so I’m not going to have it stripped/blasted and redone just for a color change, and I know, I know, you’ll never see it once it’s in the car, but I was stoked to get this part I have months of time into nicely finished in a sexy color, so the “wood brown” as I’m affectionately calling it now was a bummer.
So OK, moving on. Since the plate is back I’ll take a break tonight from working on the chassis and do some final fit checks with the transmission. Ah, but that’s no good either because Type III anodizing adds up to 0.004″ thickness (which the anodizer didn’t feel like mentioning when I specifically asked if there were any factors I should consider for choosing between Type II and III) and when we’re talking about a hole with two walls that’s almost a hundredth of an inch. So none of the alignment dowels fit any more. Doh!
I’ve got some reamers on the way to correct the holes so I’ll have it sorted out soon enough. C’est la vie.
Picture above also shows the flywheel mounted up with the new clutch; a Tilton 7.25 cerametallic twin plate.
Here’s the new clutch and flywheel for the 4 speed dog box compared to the old Spec combo for the GM tranmission:
