Sledge,
A friend and I did a TKO swap into his early BDR. The only thing I can say about it was, it was NEVERENDING!!!
Now that I have that off my chest
The driveshaft does come out you just need to lift it up and to the left, while rotating it back and forth to get it around the pinion flange.
When removing the existing T-5, we found insufficient room to pull the trans back far enough for the input shaft to clear the bell housing. The tail housing would hit the trans tunnel sides.
So with the trans loose, we removed the bell housing and it all came out the bottom. What a PITA!!
I ended up removing the interior and cutting out the trans tunnel. This made the job much easier. I flanged the tunnel with 1/8x2 alum strip to be riveted it back in at the end.
FYI, you might check your driveline angle, we found his to be 2 deg high relative to the pinion flange. When we lowered the tail shaft to remove the angle, the drive shaft yoke hit the welded in cross-member (hard). So we had to cut out the center of x-member, lower it by half the height, flange it so it could be bolted in.
Interestingly, when I was cutting thru the x-member, black fluid starts pouring out!! I thought Id hit a fuel line!! As it turns out, the welded in square tube was full of rusty, black water. We think when the frame was painted, someone rinsed it off and didn’t realize the seatbelt holes were open to the inside of the tube. I’m glad we the water out before it rusted thru!
I did fab up a cool drive shaft safety loop for it while it was apart.
It came out great, it just took a lot longer than I had originally planned
Hope this helps
Jason
Threaded Mode
