Project - Boosted Minivan

[Jeff]

Got a shifter cable for an 89 Daytona from AUTOZONE! It was there all along and I didn't know it.

So the swap is done...
It took Nick and I working over three days to do, some of that time was spent going to junkyards looking for random parts.



Transmission is an A520 manual from an 88 Daytona. These were the light duty transmission for that year, coming in turbo I cars. The weaknesses that make it "lesser" then the 555 going in the Daytona are the shift forks and the diff. This diff WILL NOT stand up to pirate burnouts very long, so I will be avoiding them.



Biggest pain in the ass was mounting the clutch cable and running it out to the transmission. We had to pull the strut to bolt the cable mount to the strut tower. It also required the removal of most of the dash and the steering column.



Getting the old tranny out was a cinch....45 minutes.



Had to weld the shifter plate to the floor. There was room for error here as the shifter plate was so bent up we could not see the contour it was supposed to follow on the floor. Ultimately we mounted it about 3in too far forward...which works out great because I am short and sit pretty close to the wheel. The way the OEM had it would almost put the shifter behind the prime location.





It turned out pretty well. On the first test drive I toasted my clutch a bit because the linkage was not adjusted properly....I kept taking off in third gear. We couldn't figure out why first was SOOO high. But it felt like it was shifting 1-2-3-4-5. It was actually going 3-4-3-4-5 I couldn't figure out why it took off so high and then it felt like a downshift to 4th...needless to say I felt like a dumbass when I realized that if I lifted the lift ring for reverse but only went over a bit I could take off just fine. So I suppose my clutch is well broken in... Won't make that error again.

I'll post finished pictures today once I get the dash bottom back on.