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Ok so it might not be square one, but still!

The gearbox rebuild had been going swimmingly. All new bearings, and took painstaking care to make sure everything was seated properly, intermeshing nicely and engaging well. Check, check, check. Awesome.

Installed the gearbox into the car and remade the shifter linkage - no more slop and stick is dead centre - perfect!

Clutch works just fine with the operating cylinder adapter plate and the repositioned pivot ball - excellent! Gen 1 mech clutch casing (without needed holes for conversion) operating with hydraulic clutch - sweeeet.

Connected up low range, electric connectors and all other accessories... went to put the drive shafts on and guess what... I used the L-series front diff. L-series front diff + liberty drive shafts = no match! . I reckon there's maybe 2mm overall diameter difference and I didn't pick it by eye, nor check before I installed into the case.

So now I've gotta take the box back out, open it back up, swap the diff to the one with correct stubs, reassemble and reinstall. Sounds simple, but without a hoist and working by myself its another few hours I don't have this week. So after being an hour from having my daily back on the road, I'm now days

At the time I didn't know whether to laugh or cry... now I just need to go to bed and get back at that transmission tomorrow night!

As I said, not square one as all the adapters are done and the low range is operating perfectly, but it is still f'cking annoying... feels like two steps forward and one step back at the moment!

Ah well, tomorrow is a new day!

Cheers,
Owen.

PS. Thanks for reading my rant

What year liberty is it? And how many spline CV shafts as you could just buy new Inner CV's to suit the gearbox side? As if it is 22 spline Liberty CV Shaft Brumby / MY rear inner DOJ (or CV's to some people) will fit and solve your problem?

Yeah been there done that, as have a lot of people I guess.

Just gotta take a big deep breath, stand back, relax (preferably with a bourbon) and tackle it again the next day with renewed spirits.

Know the feeling alright

Reading through I thought you were going to say you took it for a drive and something exploded...

Just think though, it could be worse

Matt wrote:What year liberty is it? And how many spline CV shafts as you could just buy new Inner CV's to suit the gearbox side? As if it is 22 spline Liberty CV Shaft Brumby / MY rear inner DOJ (or CV's to some people) will fit and solve your problem?

'97 outback. I could do that eh, but then everytime I look for spares it is inconvenient to explain. Besides, in the time it takes me to find a car to borrow and get to the wreckers to find the above, pull it, return borrowed vehicle and get myself home I'd be closed to finished the diff swap.

niterida wrote:Yeah been there done that, as have a lot of people I guess.

Just gotta take a big deep breath, stand back, relax (preferably with a bourbon) and tackle it again the next day with renewed spirits.

Pretty much how I'm feeling. Just needed to vent eh.

Silverbullet wrote: Reading through I thought you were going to say you took it for a drive and something exploded...

Been there, done that :mrgreen:.

Cheers boys, feeling better already.

Kinda know how you feel, I had a motor in one of my WRX's re-built, put it back in, did all the wiring, hoses & fluids etc only to find I'd put the thrust bearing in the wrong way around.....oh well.....shit happens.

I'd have a look at your options for mixing/matching inner CV cups. There might be a combination to suit the stubs in the gearbox already. In fact I'm sure there is. For one of my projects I need standard Outback front driveshafts but with inner cups to suit L series stubs, and the CV place tell me they can do it for me - they'd already done it for someone else previously.

Owen.. I'd look at what Andrew has mentioned.. for the time being. This would get you on the road fast and then look at changing back to the Liberty/Outback stubs once or if ever you had problems with the box again.

They are an easy swap over once the box is open. Just requires a set of bent nose circlip pliers.

Does this mean you are running the L Series front diff crown wheel? if so, did you use the L Series pinion shaft? I thought you were going with the 4.11 ratio?

Cheers,
Paul

Good to see it back on the road! Hope we get it out bush to see what it can do sometime soon...

You didn't tell me you had this issue with the gearbox (re) build...

Cheers

Bennie

Thanks for all your comments and ideas guys, it made me feel much better at the time. In the end I pulled the box back out and switch the diff over for simplicities sake. Plus i'm also a perfectionist, and knowing I could have done the project better would have irked me no end. I'm not sure how many times I put the drive shaft on to check - at least 5 times before it went back into the car - just to make sure it hadn't magically changed...

I'm relieved (and a little proud) to say that the box is working quietly and smoothly. It's loosing a bit of oil - the drain plug I suspect. I'm going to drop the oil again (the last lot was almost clean - I used the main gearset from the gearbox that went arrarghhghh) and change the plug at the same time. Loving the new 4.11 gearing, the car just wants to pull hard.

Paul, I used the liberty pinion shaft in both boxes. The l-series and liberty diffs are the same, save the stubs (obviously). I just swapped the crown wheels over.

Interestingly, off memory the 4.11 and 3.7 gearboxes shared the same ring gear (37 teeth), it was the pinion shaft that was different (9 from the rex, 10 from the outback).

The 3.9 had a different ring gear (35 I think) and the 9 spine pinion shaft (but 35/9 = 3.89?). L-series pinion shaft won't work as its too long, unless you cdo all that cut and shut trickery to make it work AWD and center locker . Which I haven't done, alas I'll have to settled for DCCD when I eventually find one...

I'll have to collect up what I have left over, but i'm pretty sure that to do this conversion you don't actually need the cw/ps from a rex box, instead you could use the correct spine/teeth combination being the 35t ring gear from a 3.7 liberty/outback and the pinion shaft from a 3.9 (9 spine pinion gear). I'll need to check my notes and what I have left over to confirm though.

Thanks again guys!

Owen.

ScubyRoo wrote: i'm pretty sure that to do this conversion you don't actually need the cw/ps from a rex box, instead you could use the correct spine/teeth combination being the 35t ring gear from a 3.7 liberty/outback and the pinion shaft from a 3.9 (9 spine pinion gear). I'll need to check my notes and what I have left over to confirm though.

Yeah I'm not sure this will work mate - the shape of the gears I'm sure are different to mesh in properly. If you use this setup you might find that the diff is noisy or klunky in its operation. One way to find out though...

Cheers

Bennie

El_Freddo wrote:Yeah I'm not sure this will work mate - the shape of the gears I'm sure are different to mesh in properly.

I bought 2x 4.11 pinion shafts, both with 9 spines. I ended up with 3x 9 spine pinion shafts, all of which were exactly identical (I could only tell the difference as I had written on them with white paint marker. I didn't go as far as getting the vernier callipers out, but visually they were identical in thickness and curvature of the spines

You could be on to something then! I haven't looked at units from different diff ratios but if the curve angle and thickness of the teeth are the same with the different pinion gears then it looks like it is possible to do - and a smart thing for subaru with the manufacturing of one pinion shaft for several diff ratio combinations...

Cheers

Bennie

Not sure if I'm off the beaten track here but when we put the 4.44 cw & p on my front diff we also put a 4.44 cw & p in the rear diff which was a 4.1 originally.