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With the chassis rails cleaned out of grot I could get on with repairing a few bodged sections along the rails.

The first was the shock mounts.
For some reason a third hole had been drilled next to the original, same for both sides.



Repaired.



There are fours holes in a row along the top of the rail that the inner arch panel bolts to. The second hole in from the front on both sides had been hogged out from their original 5/16 (8mm) size.
The drivers side was worse. Looked like it had been opened up with a gas axe.



I was feeling lazy or possibly cocky and decided to back it with copper and just plug weld it.



In hindsight this was a stupid idea as it was much too big but I did manage to fill it!



The reverse side needed the same repair.



I decided to do this side properly (!) and made a paper template which I transferred to some scrap 2mm.



Much better. Burned in and cleaned up.



On to the passenger side rail.
The hole on the left shouldn’t be there and the one on the right is the opposite inner arch panel hole from the other side.
They were feeling all fancy on this side with the use of a drill to hog it out.



I needed a pair of circular patches.
I used a 20mm hole saw to drill through a piece of scrap wood.



Clamped in the drill press with some more 2mm scrap. Hole saw is lined up with the previous hole and the centre drill removed.



That will work.



Cleaned up and ground to size.



Welded and finished.





With the chassis rail repairs done and before I addressed reattaching the two chassis rail skins I wanted try and get some rust protection between the two using the opportunity that they were already spread apart.
Some aerosol Waxoyl sprayed into the gaps and holes and then worked inwards with my universal homemade chiv.
Something has to be better than nothing.

With the gearbox finished I could carry on with the chassis.

The front crossmember is bolted in, this isn’t factory as it should be riveted. It has always been this way since I’ve had it and going by how natural it all looked had been like that a long time.
Luckily, whoever did it had done it very well as they had carefully removed each rivet without cutting or damaging anything else.

Because the crossmember was now bolted in, it gave me the opportunity to be able to remove it from the chassis rails, clean any grot behind it and replace the hardware for new.

Before I removed it I made some repairs while it was still bolted in it’s original position.
The front crossmember has these wing extensions that serve as the radiator mounts.



For some reason a section had been crudely cut from each side.
A simple flat piece of 2mm repaired the first one.





The other side needed a little more shape to it. Also some repair work needed to the elongated mounting hole.



Finished up.



There were a few remaining factory rivets left holding the wings to the front crossmember. These were dead and just rattling in their holes.
They had the heads ground off and knocked out.



The wing section off showing why I wanted to break it all down.



Cleaned and painted with Por-15.



With it lined up again the old rivet holes were plug welded close.
This alone made such improvement to the rigidity.



With the crossmember repairs done I could now remove it from the chassis.

With my order for gearbox parts placed I got cracking with this mess.



The only way to get this properly clean and to access any hidden rot was to remove the centre section of the chassis.
The original, which this isn’t, is a riveted together structure and isn’t removable. Mine is now bolt in as it was replaced by Royal Kustoms when they converted the car to a 5-speed.

Like the gearbox this had never been out since it was originally fitted.
The centre section that ties the two sides of the chassis together came out fine, I thought this one might be troublesome as it’s a very tight fit.
The bottom plate proved more problematic as both the front and rear suspension are tied into it.



In the end I had to roll the whole front end out to gain enough clearance to be able to drop the plate.
I used this opportunity to also unbolt another load of stuff like brake lines, anti-roll brackets, shocks mounts etc. ridding the chassis of as much paraphernalia as possible.



Here’s the centre crossmember pieces out and cleaned up. They are lovely things but were missing something.



Here’s how much sand washed off just the hardware alone!



What the crossmember was missing was holes, lots of lovely lightweight holes!
But before that I needed to know the starting weight.



16.7kg or as accurate as converting our imperial bathroom scales can be.

After some holes were drilled I realised that the two crossmember pieces overlapped in some spots.
You can’t just have misaligned holes so it all got a little silly and I started transferring the hole centres between the two pieces.





There was no way I was hand drilling all these holes so I had to get creative supporting the parts in the drill press.



Interesting way of deburring the holes on the inside.



Oh yes.



And the finished weight 15.8kg. A nats under a kilo, I’ll take it.

As I mentioned a couple of times already these TKO’s are known as poor shifters, which they are.
There are a few reasons for this and you have to delve into their history for the reasons why.
The gearbox was originally conceived in the early 90’s by Tremec as a universal gearbox for commercial vehicles. Because of this they were built beefy for strength and also due to their intended low rpm usage a 3-rail shifter system and all brass synchro rings were specified.
At some point they became the go to 5-speed in the aftermarket performance world mainly for their inherent strength.
This is were the problems start.
Their beef means they are quite large for a 5-speed which can prove troublesome with retro fits.
The 3-rail system is quite complicated with many gates, springs and plungers which don’t like to be rushed with fast shifting but the real issue comes from the all brass synchros.
These were already out dated by the early 90’s with carbon lined synchros in common use by this time.
The factory fitted brass synchros used in the TKO’s are actually lifted straight from the Ford top loader of the 1960’s!
This is the main issue for the poor shifting. With the gears being so much bigger than a top loader means more mass and inertia which the synchro rings were never designed to slow down, so at higher revs with a fast shift you end up with missed shifts or crunching gears.

This is all solvable it just means the whole gearbox has to come apart…

First to come out are the reverse switch (left) and neutral safety switch (right).
Neither were connected.



Shifter top and cover plate off.
Notice the two shifter ball sockets. The shifter can be mounted in two alternate positions with no modifications. A shifter is also available to put it directly over the shifters.



This gives access to the shifters. These are held in with roll pin through each one. The roll pins need to be knocked out to free the shifters from their shafts so the rear housing can be removed.





This is the first time the ‘box has been apart and was absolutely minty, minty inside.
Notice on the countershaft that there is provision for a mechanical and a electronic speedo, attesting to its universal fitment.



Next the lid has to come off. These gearboxes have no gaskets and are assembled with an anaerobic sealer which also acts as a thread lock. To save stressing the threads of the aluminium casing the joints are hit the flame gun to burn the sealer out.



And use the handy dandy prying point to lift the lid.





Next the input shaft can come off making sure not to lose the individual needle rollers.
There are shims behind the race that goes in the front retainer. These set the end float on the counter shaft.



Back to the rear again.
5th gear hub removed collecting up all the needle rollers that fall out.



The roll pin holding the 5th gear shift fork is knocked out which allows the the 5th gear/hub assembly to slide off. Picking up all the needle rollers again!



The counter shaft assembly can now come out. It’s quite a lump.



Minty Mcmintison.



This is where I stopped in the disassembly. It was only the cluster gear and reverse idler left and these would only need to come out if damaged or worn bearings which this had neither.



What I did do was reset the end float on the cluster which should be 0.
To do this the 5th gear hub and bearing goes back on and the tail housing bolted back on to the case.
The end float is set with shims behind the race in the tail housing.





On to the counter shaft.
3/4 synchro hub assembly and 3rd gear synchro ring. 4th gear synchro ring has already come off when the input shaft is removed.



3rd gear with its bearing/spacers.



Split ring retainer and anti rotation ball.



Followed by 2nd gear, synchro ring and bearing.



There is a snap ring that holds the 1/2 assembly in. I splashed out on a proper pair of snap ring pliers which after I had ground the heads to something reasonable worked great. 🙄



Snap ring removed allows the 1/2 synchro hub assembly to slide off.



And followed by 1st gear and the final synchro ring.



This left another split ring retainer and bearing but again this didn’t need changing so was left.



All in all I was rather pleased that everything was in such good condition and my only real out lay would be the replacement synchro rings.

Cool, a little V8-60.
What’s it going in? Vedette?

First job was to remove the freshly painted front clip… again. I did mention earlier it comes on and off a lot!
Luckily our new garden patio proved a handy storage area.





Leaving this.



Dashboard, interior and floorboards up.



Inlet was removed so I could use my lifting plate.
Then the first wtf moment.
The inlet gasket had broken and pushed out at the back of the valve chest.
I had no idea why it would do this and or even that it had done it as it wasn’t visible being tight up against the firewall and hadn’t leaked a drop of oil either, amazingly.



I let it be and moved on but it was obviously playing on my mind as a day later I had a brainwave.
The Flathead has an open breather at the back of the inlet manifold because of this I’d been pulled up one too many times by scrutineers (when they notice!) because you can’t race without a closed breather system or catch can.
What I did, some time ago, was cobble together a sealed breather that fed into a catch can.
Obviously it never breathed sufficiently enough causing a buildup of crankcase pressure which found the weakest point, the thin area of gasket at the back of the inlet.
I guess I also found the source of the fumes that had randomly appeared or not so random it seems.

Engine out meant the gearbox could follow.



Sand and salt.



With the engine and ‘box meant I could get inside the chassis.

Oh dear… More sand and salt.





Bare in mind that everything you see was new/restored, painted and clean.
Everything that was inline of the front wheel sweep is trashed.









The to do list is growing.

Indeed!

No, I accept YOUR challenge of getting to the Quick60.

The power steering hose had fractured for the second time. Once is unlucky, twice is a pattern.
It might be hard to see but here is where both hoses had broken, right on the flare of the steel hardline.



While I was dropping the power steering belt in the paddock at Mallory some guys came past and we got chatting which led to me finding out that of them was a power steering hose specialist!
We discussed a custom hose that could possibly eliminate the hard line issues.
This seemed like a great solution at the time but the more I thought about it the more I came to the conclusion that it may not be that simple.
The OEM hose is quite a complicated affair that has to have the hardline in it and the hardline also has to very accurate to original as it all gets very tight in places.
If it was you I spoke to, thank you, but I decided to go in a different direction as you’ll see.





This is how the hose sits when fitted to the pump. It’s basically got all the weight hanging off the flare.
Not a great design but not an issue with a stocker. The higher rpm when racing seemed to be causing some sort vibration/harmonics that were causing the flare to fail prematurely.



My idea was to keep with the OEM hose as their cheap and easily available but build a bracket that would support the hardline.

I dug out some 6mm plate as this mirrored the pumps 1/4” factory mounting bracket.
The plate got shaped around the pump and the pump body bolt positions transferred to the bracket and a couple of longer UNC bolts used to replace the originals.



Once I had the bracket position set I could then start to create a cutout for the hose to pass over.



I cut a piece of tube in half to act as a tray under the hose. This would support the hardline and give me a position to place a jubilee clip to hold it all tight.



Cleaned up with a lightening hole for good luck.

Time will tell if it’s successful but I’m happy for now as the hardline is fully supported but the hose still has full flexibility without it pulling on the fittings flare.