Once I had the doubler parts I wanted to start test fitting things to make sure everything would fit before I got too far into the project. I began by temporarily assembling the two cases. I soon found out that the assembly was almost too long and there was some interferance with the crossmember. Not only did I want the assembly to clear everything, but I knew that I would need some additional room for the drivetrain to "float" and enough clearance to reach the drain and fill plugs.

To clear the crossmember I did two things. The first was to remove this extra tab on the rear case housing:

It ended up looking like this:


Removing the tab helped the assembly to clear the crossmember, but it still didn't give me enough room to access the drain plug. My solution to this was to shorten the entire assembly 1/2" by removing the clocking ring. The clocking ring is a nice feature that is included in the kit, but unfortunately I could not afford the extra length that it caused. I experimented with various clocking positions and finally found one I was happy with. I settled on the final position because it was nicely tucked in above the t-bar without hitting the bottom of the floor.

To eliminate the clocking ring, I marked it's location and used the ring as a template to drill through the rear plate of the doubler case. Once these holes were drilled, I countersunk them so that bolt heads would clear the internals of the doubler case. The result looked like this:


I bolted the assembly together only to find out that once the clocking ring was removed that the rear case would no longer clear the bolt head that holds the rear part of the doubler shifter rail from floating around. I solved this problem by countersinking that bolt head as well:



Once that was completed, I assembled them again for another test fit and was happy with the results.


Next part: making it work. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />