Hi

Just about to fit my R1 engine and a westfield reverse box.

Question:

When looking from the side of the car if i keep the rear shaft and box parallel to the bottom of the car the front shaft is almost at the max movement of the UJ's!
(not good?)


would it be better to have the rear shaft pointing up towards the front of the car (about 3/5 dgrees) this will make the front uj's only about half there movement

Thanks

Mike

I'd put it with some angle on both shafts.

Ideally you want the gearbox and diff flanges to be parallel to each other. Otherwise you'll get vibration. UJ's also want to have an angle on them otherwise the bearings don't move and soon wear out so you want the flanges slightly off-set.

adrian

As above, try and put an equal amount of angle on each UJ and definately dont have any UJ's with no angle at all as they will wear out quickly.

Thsi is what i mean the shaft up to the engine is quite sharp?
Rescued attachment 100_2531.JPG

Sorry this one
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It won't let me post photos
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Do you think this will be ok?
Rescued attachment 100_2529.JPG

Sorry just noticed in the photos

You cannot see the rear Uj's on the diff,

So all in all 4 Uj's two on the front shaft and two on the rear

Do you think this setup will be Ok

Cheers

Mike

Yikes thats a hell of an angle on the front UJs. However, i'd say you really need to position your engine first as it probably need to sit a bit lower to fit under the bonnet and also its not flat. You need to level the engine off with the sump mounting face parallel to the chassis rather than sit it on the angle of the sump. It'll stick out below the chassis a bit but so long as you have 80mm+ clearance to the ground then you should be fine. guess you will have an inch to inch and half of sump sticking below the chassis

Hi

i see what you mean,.. i was trying to keep the sump level with the base of the car! but as you say if i drop the engine down an inch or so and rotate it to the right 5 or so degrees that will bring the output shaft down about 2 inches.

i think that will make the angle of the front shaft alot better.
i will try this Friday

thanks mike

It'll definately flatten that prop angle off a lot but not entirely - but then again the output shaft of an R1 is comparatively high so they're all like that to a certain extent. Once you have your engine positioned, you can then look to even out the UJ angles with your reverse box mountings which do need to be pretty sturdy.

Another thing you may want to bear in mind is keeping the diff flange, reverse box flanges, and prop adaptor all parallel to each other.

Mike, it's not the same exactly, but on this car it had a Zetec to start with and I put a Blade in there.

I don't remember taking photos from the angles that you may need but have a look at the photos and see if something makes sense.

I found it best to drop the engine one inch past the bottom of the chassis and then it was a balance between alignment of the prop and alignment of the top chassis rails for the exhaust etc.

http://www.p4nts.co.uk/dangleblade/

Cheers,
Steve

Yep drop the engine an inch or 2 and raise the box an inch