FTO AUSTRALIA

I have a manual conversion kit sitting in my garage. The manual box is filled with oil and has the drive shafts attached.

If I remove the drive shafts without draining the oil first, will oil spill out everywhere?

Yep. Unless you part the inner CV joint - ie leave half the cup in the box, just cut the tie on the inner CV boot & pop the joint out.

^^ this, but better to drain the oil, easier than disassembling and then re assembling your driveshafts lol!

Its a messier business than draining the box oil

^^ yeah exactly what I was thinking

I probably won't bother.

Removing the drive shafts would be convenient as I could then get my car into the garage but it seems like more trouble than it is worth. I will install it with the shafts and then replace the oil when I am happy.

On a related but different note, is the torque converter balanced out of the factory to match the engine? I.e. Should I be looking at balancing the clutch / flywheel to match the balance of the current torque converter or just have a neutral balance?

Incase anyone is thinking of doing the same, I just spoke to KC's Dynamic Engine Balancing & Head Servicing in Castle Hill and was told that the proper way to go about balancing the flywheel is to remove the flexplate and match the balance between the current flexplate and the flywheel. This will ensure the engine doesn't vibrate itself to pieces at high RPM.

If you have the right tool, splitting the inner boot is easy enough.

Bennoz wrote:Its a messier business than draining the box oil

This forum make it a lot harder than it was to change/remove the drive shaft. If you gave me another go at it, it's really an hour job. The crown bolt is not as hard as stated on this forum! I used a 5 metre drainage pipe on my extension and it came off straight away.

The only issue I had was the inner boot would not stay on. It was not messy but it did make me buy a CV clamping tool. If you told me to do it again it's an hour job easily, and I did not find it messy at all.