FTO AUSTRALIA

As some of you may/may not know/care, I was having issues with movement, crunching and thudding in the general gearbox area of the car.

Phase one (hopefully the only phase)

The inner CV joint is, to put it bluntly, FUCKED! I asked the workshop to try to locate a replacement axle/CV assembly for me, the cheapest they could find was $185 NZD + GST + overnight courier.

I found a real good bastard on trademe wrecking a GR model. He lives about 40 minutes out of the city, but was good enough to not only drop it off to the workshop, but also to bring in the other side (in case he mixed them up) and let the mechanic inspect it before taking my $50...

Good bastard for' sho! (sorry, I just had to). To say the least, so far, I am pretty happy.

Now for the not-so-good part; because the car is so low, and by looking at how the engine/box had been mounted a little forward to clear the firewall, the mechanic suspects that the axles being flat, and (not that he can tell yet) that they may be on some sort of un-natural angle which contributed to this.

OR, which I suspect, a year of me not doing any upkeep (I have lame excuses, like no available money etc etc) may have contributed to this, as the CV boot is torn and may have caused the problem.

Phase 2 (hopefully not an issue)

The gearbox is apparently flaring (which I have known since well before I raced it at Ruapuna, over 15 months ago now) but I am hoping to the car god that things will hold up after this and allow me to chip away at the problems one at a time as money becomes available.

I have been driving this car nicely (as only a driver who knows every quirk of a car could) since I brought it.

I don't care whether you believe in a car god or not, but please pray to her for me

Seeing as the driveshafts are about to come out, why not pull the box as well? Might get a good price from the bloke with the shafts! I reckon on a hoist you could do a g/box & driveshaft swap in about 2 - 3 hours.

Just had a call, 2 hours labour and it is 85-90% better (I will know more once I have driven it myself). It is still having a slight shudder (that may be with hard shifting, which I don't do).

$50 for the axle + $159.75 labour, job done... Pretty happy to say the least!!!

Nice!

Just picked the bugger up, and I am not sure if it is that I have driven it in that state for 2 months (not really driven it much, to view apartments and houses etc) but she feels tighter than she has for a long old time

v nice mate. .. looks like you got out of it pretty cheaply & without too much major drama's ..

I guess the car god was smiling upon you after all

hope you have as much luck with the gearbox issues

Yesterdays mechanic put me onto a company who specialises in gearboxes, he sent his own daughter's beemer there and said "Fix it, I don't care what it costs, I don't want mates rates, I don't want a second hand box, I want this automatic FIXED and be able to last for 500,000 k's!" apparently they said "sure no problem" and rebuilt it damned strong and gave a 200,000 k warranty all for only $3k.

Obviously he was kidding when he said he wanted 500k's out of it, but he was damn surprised with the warranty.

Now, when (haha, when) I get my one rebuilt I wont obviously get a warranty (after all, the beemer is owned by a middle aged woman who wont do any thrashing) but having that sort of professionalism and confidence in your work is enough to convince me to give them a go

The plan in the next couple of months is to buy a second hand gearbox and get them to rebuild it thoroughly. As long as internals are available for the FTO, I should be able to have a gearbox that will withstand 400+ wheel hp and a mountain of torque.

Will be expensive for sure, but not too much so. I wouldn't think it would be more than a manual conversion/clutch/flywheel/axles etc setup.