Well, I about got it. I little more cleaning up on the bellhousing, and then I can make my mold. After that, casting will shortly follow.

If you notice, there are two holes for the clutch fork. This makes it so you have the option of either side so you don't have to relocate your slave cyl if you are already manual.

I would like to know exactly how many would want one of these within the next 2 months. I need to get a good idea on how many I should have cast in the first batch. They will run about $350

Good work looks great! Will they be heat treated?

Now if you could show me how to have a radiator, A/C and an intercooler with a 7M-GTE in my '84 I'd do it. If I build it as an off road dedicated rig I might forgo the A/C. -- Matt

Awesome!! Definitely a future customer here, project is still a couple years off...

Could heat treat them, that would be a small additional cost.

Go water cooled IC, and that is EASY!

I think the factory pieces are heat treated. I used to haul a lot of automotive production goods for GM. Some of which were aluminum castings that were going from the casting facility to another company that did the heat treating. They used to let us truck drivers wander all around some of the coolest and most historic automotive plants in North America. It was very interesting to a gearhead like me. <BTW> What alloy is going into these units? Are you doing the casting "in-house" , or contracting it out?

A liquid cooled IC still needs some kind of radiator doesn't it? How big would that be? And can I have A/C if I go that route? -- Matt

I will be contracting out the castings, probably use 356 alloy.

Yes with a water cooled IC, you have to have a radiator of sort, but that can be much smaller than an air-to-air IC.

Here is a picture of a casting I did. Would have been better, but I had no way to control the flow since I was doing it by myself without the use of any device to help support the weight. A sprue collapsed because I started pouring too fast.

It sounds like you were doing it as a sand casting. I wish I knew more about casting. Gotta hand it to you though. You deserve the Golden Wrench Award! For your Supracharged.com website and all your mad scientist Toyota engine swaps. I hope you will ask the casting company, that you use to make your bellhousings, to let you do an article on the process. Take lots of pictures and also fill us in on the methods you used to mock-up your plug. -- Matt

I will defaintly ask them to watch the process, so I can then improve my own. I doubt they will let me take pictures....but you never know.

Yes, I did sand casting. I wanted to do investment and lost wax casting, and I have even purchased $800 in silicon to do so, but after talking to the casting companies, sand casting is cheaper. You really only need to do lost wax if you need every little detail to be perfect. Also the chance for failure and inpefections goes to almost nothing, where as sand casting will be slightly different each time depending on how well the patter releases.

There are also different kinds of sand I can use, I may have to experiement with that.

All of the Toyota bellhousings I've seen have ribs running from front to back on the outside surface. I assume that this is a strengthening measure. I have a factory 7MGTE bellhousing that I was saving to use as a donor for a welded hybrid 4x4 project. I'm going to look at it tomorrow and see if i can come up with some more questions for you. -- Matt

Yes, there were the ribs, but thas was to add strength with using less aluminum. These bellhousings are actually a quite a bit thicker than factory bellhousings, therefore stronger. They do weight a little more, but that is ok.

I am looking for a factory R154 bellhousing to do my next pattern though.