[hoophead]

How is 5th gear? Is it "shallow"? Sometimes the brass shift fork will slide on its shaft if someone tried to jam it into gear. There's just a small 8mm bolt clamping the fork onto the shaft. You could try pushing hard into 5th to see if it will slide back, but ultimately you'll need to open the transmission and fix the fork, if that's the problem and not some syncro/dogteeth issue with 4th.

The fingers on the fork can also wear if not set correctly or someone drives around with their hand on the shifter.

[BillC]

Originally Posted by hoophead

How is 5th gear? Is it "shallow"? Sometimes the brass shift fork will slide on its shaft if someone tried to jam it into gear. There's just a small 8mm bolt clamping the fork onto the shaft. You could try pushing hard into 5th to see if it will slide back, but ultimately you'll need to open the transmission and fix the fork, if that's the problem and not some syncro/dogteeth issue with 4th.

The fingers on the fork can also wear if not set correctly or someone drives around with their hand on the shifter.

Good questions. If only it were that simple. 5th gear actually seems to come further back than 3rd or 1st. So there's too much overall travel for 4th/5th, rather than just offset travel.

When the spare trans comes back, I'll try pulling the shift console and see if I can see anything obvious inside there. But, chances are really good that the trans has to come out and get opened up to diagnose what's going on.

[BillC]

The smoke machine arrived a couple of days ago, along with smoke fluid.

Yeah, I know I could have used baby oil instead, but my babies have all grown up and I no longer need to lubricate them, so we're out of that.

The adapters that came with the machine were very useful. There's an expanding bladder plug that fit very nicely in the top of the throttle body. Made it easy to hook up the machine. Only needed to plug the hose to the AAR.

Turns out the driver's side fuel injectors weren't seated properly:

So I took the injectors out, double-checked the seals were still in good shape (they were, since they were brand-new a couple of months ago), and reinstalled them.

Once the injectors were re-seated, I turned the smoke machine back on, to verify they were sealing properly (they were). That's when I noticed smoke from both sides of the throttle body, through the shaft openings.

My first thought was the TB shaft bore must be worn out. Then I realized the smoke had no where else to go except there. So, I decided to just start the car and see if I could adjust the idle. Once it completely warmed up and the AAR closed, I had no problem adjusting the idle to around 950-ish. Could have even gone a little lower if I had wanted.

Once that was done and everything buttoned back up again, my wife and I went for a drive! We only went to a local gas station to fill up, but that was another 6 miles on a car that did nothing but sit for my first 4.5 years with it.

Also, my other orders finally came in. I already installed the LED headlights. :headbanger: Tomorrow, I'll work on hooking up the new heater booster fan hoses from 914 Rubber and installing the new seat belts from Seat Belt Planet.

[Dr K]

Congrats, Bill. Great to know there is now a smoke machine in MontCo.

[Patrick3000]

Congratulations

[cmartin]

x2 nice work

[BillC]

Had more time to work on the car today.

First was installing the new seatbelts from seatbeltplanet.com . Decent kit, mostly plug&play, but did require some modifications. First, a few of the mounting holes needed to be opened up a little to use the stock mounting bolts. The bottom seat belt tabs needed to be opened just a little to fit the plastic bushings. And, the center latches needed to be drilled out as well; 14mm would work, but the 9/16" drill I had was close enough.

Second, the kit does not include the bent wire guides that are used on the stock seatbelts. These guides are important because the space the seatbelt reel away from the firewall, and they also keep the belt from rubbing. While I could have cut the old belts to get the guides off, there's no way I could have gotten the guides onto the new belts without modification. So, I modified them. I used a cutoff wheel in the dremel to slice through the factory welding.

Then, I was able to spread the guide to get it off the old belt and onto the new belt. Once that was done, they mounted just like the stock reels.

And, after it was all done, it looks pretty much stock.

Only difference is the new seatbelt latches don't have any wiring. Unplugging the old latches had the effect of disabling the warning buzzer, so I'm okay with that. I could have used the new belts with the old latches, but the catch tabs didn't fit very well into the latches, and the old-style side release buttons are supposedly not very secure compared to the new-style end buttons.

Then, I installed the fire extinguisher mount I got from Ben ( @mb911 on 914World ). Fortunately, this was a pretty straight-forward installation. I first mounted Ben's bracket, then I placed the fire extinguisher on the bracket. Once the FE was located, I took the bracket off and drilled mounting holes for the FE bracket on Ben's bracket. Then, everything bolted into place.

[BillC]

Some more parts arrived, so time to have a little fun installing!

I needed some hose to connect the aux heat fan to the top of the "J" tubes, so I ordered 8 feet of 2 1/4" neoprene ducting hose from Aircraft Spruce, since that was the only place I could find this size that could deliver this year. Turns out I could have gotten away with only 5 feet, since I have 3 feet left over.

Technically, the fan outlets and the "J" tubes are 55mm, and 2 1/4" is 57.2mm, but it fit just fine. There are sellers on ebay selling 55mm hose, but they are in China and who knows when it would arrive. I also found 2 sellers from the UK, but they were really proud of their stuff, and it still wouldn't arrive any time soon.

BTW, at this time, the heater hose being sold by 914Rubber is the wrong size -- it is 2.5", which is just too big to fit or clamp down properly. However, when I called them and explained the problem, they immediately offered to send me a shipping label to return the hose and promised to get the size fixed.

I also received my order from SuperBrightLeds, and now I have a functional back pad light. I got the 42mm bulb in "warm white", and it fit perfectly into the light fixture I got from 914Rubber.

[BillC]

Since the car is running okay, and since the weather has gotten really cold out, I've been working on the race car taking care of its maintenance needs. However, that doesn't mean I've completely ignored my 914.

Shortly after I got the car, I bought 5 new 195/65R15 BF Goodrich tires. Nice tires, but noticeably "fatter" than stock tires. Being fatter, the hold down screw for the spare no longer reached the thread at the bottom of the spare tire well using the stock hold down plate.

My options were getting new tires before these wear out (not gonna happen), making an extension for the screw, making a longer screw or making a new hold down plate.

I chose the latter option. I used a hole saw to cut a piece out of some 1/2" aluminum plate I had. I then turned it down in the lathe and finally cut a slot using the mill.



The new plate drops the flange surface about a half-inch lower, allowing the screw to reach and hold the tire down.

[Dandelion]

Should've just let all the air out, and the original screw would have fit with the tire flat.