The Transmission

This post does not wax oratorical like the previous few. Those readers who have been delighted by philosophy will be disappointed. However, those readers who have been waiting for pictures of grease, grime, and metal will find themselves wholly delighted.

There have been a number of tasks to get the car road worthy this year. I have been slowly whittling down the list while experiencing delays, disease, and discover additional broken pieces. There has also been a few changes of course to try and make things either easier or cheaper. One of the first cost-savings measures is the orientation of the intake. Originally, I had planned to run the pipes symmetrically as I had with the old engine. Unfortunately, with the location of the new alternator I was not able to run a simple 90-degree bend. After realizing how much rust build up occurred in the old mild steel intake I decided to use a material that would not rust such as aluminum or stainless steel. I tried to MIG aluminum and the results were astoundingly terrible as I used the wrong gas and no spool gun -- both of which were out of my price range. This meant I would try stainless steel. My attempts at using stainless steel were mostly folly. The welding attempts led to more holes and slag than anything resembling metal work. In a last ditch effort I attempted to purchase a couple of different intakes with the bent pre-fabricated. After three attempts, I could not find one that would actually clear my alternator. I conceded that if I were to spend any more money on the intake system I would simply run the stock-style asymmetrical setup. Yes, this setup is more pipe, but it was actually significantly cheaper to assemble. All things considered it doesn't look too bad:

This car is intended to be drag raced and most drag cars feature automatic transmissions. Manual transmissions are usually considered more sporting and racy. In fact, the Capri was originally equipped with a 5-speed manual transmission - the ubiquitous Tremec/Borg-Warner T5. Manual transmissions do allow the most power to reach the rear wheels, and back in the early days of hot-rodding, manual transmissions were considerably stronger than their automatically shifted counterparts.

In modern times, automatic transmissions have proven themselves the superior hardware for drag racing for a few reasons. The first reason is consistency, with a manual transmission the driver risks missing a shift or slipping the clutch incorrectly leading to a bad run. With an automatic, there is no clutch or gears to miss. The second benefit requires thinking a little bit about math and physics. With a manual transmission there are brief moments of where power is lost to the rear wheels. These are brief moments are called "shifts." It's easy to dismiss this as saying "shifting takes very little time and cannot possibly make a difference." When the entirety of a race lasts only 11 seconds even fractions of a second count. Races are measured and can be determined by thousandths of a second. Finally, the infamous T5 transmission is notably weak when being raced with lowly stock power levels.

Knowing all of these facts I reluctantly settled on converting the Capri to a Ford C4 automatic transmission. I purchased a reasonably well-reinforced automatic transmission and had planned to install it. I had continued with this plan until I discovered that to make the automatic survive would require at least another $600 in parts and another three weeks to wait for them to arrive. Instead, I decided for $300 I would purchase a new clutch and backup transmission. Here are some of the installation pictures:

The new clutch from Tampa Clutch Supply, my rebuilt old Centerforce:

Installed:

As of this past weekend, I also installed a transmission blanket which is a neat kevlar lump that prevents me from losing my toes in case gears decide to exit from the transmission. The car's drivetrain is assembled and I'm left to scrap together some exhaust, hopefully, that will be finished by the end of the weekend.