blandry23

no emissions check, just safety. the only things i'm worried about with that is part of the frame has cancer although ive read that they only check from where the suspension connects to the frame for rust and cancer, and my tires are pretty dry rotted. not super bad, but they're not too good. i think switching my tires would be a good option. i need new tires anyways

thatpoorguy

wouldn't be a bad option. also pick your place to get the inspection wisely. If you see a bunch of oem trucks, camaros, and mustangs in the lot, they probably aren't going to like your car and try and fail you lol. find one with civics and toyotas, you'll be in good hands more often than not. take it from experience, I did safety inspections at a shop in texas. I'd try to help the customer pass as much as possible, but if a few of the guys got an import, they'd nitpick everything till it would fail

blandry23

lol damn. i did take it to a guy that my dad usually takes all of our cars to. he passed it and told me what i had to get fixed on it. rear brakes, tie rod, and the frame rust i was worried about. its not gonna pass next year so i'll just get my enjoyment out of it, and part it out when the time comes.

question about the tie rod though. is it possible for me to "tighten" it? the wheel wobbles like a **** cuz i attempted to hammer the caliper off because it was seized on the upper pin. i did hit it multiple times, but i wouldn't think that would be enough to bend the tie rod. the guy showed me that it wobbled, and you can feel the feedback through the brakes.

Lynn E. Hanover

There is no 4th gear in most transmissions. In racing 5 speeds and some 6 speeds, there may be a 5th that is straight through rather than 4th. 4th is just locking up the input shaft with the main/tail shaft. This gives you the input and output shaft locked together, or, straight through or 1:1 (no reduction) It is still done with the 3/4 slider (a splined sleeve) and still uses a synchrownizer like other gears. It sounds like the splines on the slider are hosed to the point of being nonexistant. When you try for 4th the flat ended splines get a bur on them and stick on the end of the 3/4 hub and it seems to hang up in the nonexistant 4th gear. If you keep trying that it can hang up so thuroghly that you will need to break down the trans to beat it out of 4th with a hammer.

Been there/done that. There should be a bunch of scrap steel on the drain plug magnet to show you this damage.

The sliders are just a bit softer than the splines on the gear faces and the first motion shaft (input shaft) so you may still have a good enough piece to rebuild from and just need a new set of sliders. Always add new synchros when rebuilding. Should last 100,000 miles unless you race the car.

Tip number one: use the lightest clutch disc that will handle your torque. The heavier the disc the shorter the synchro life.

Tip number 2:

Grind off every other spline from inside the sliders and from the gear faces. Now you have a near dog ring trans.
Windows are 4 times as big and shifts can be very fast with no damage at all.

Tip number 3:
I have not been inside an FD trans so this is a guess. If the synchrow keys have that same wire spring with the bent 90 degree end on it, discard them and make your own out of .032 music wire from the hobby shop. Make them long enough to lap under two of the keys. Now the synchrows are much more effective and that little tip cannot break off and let a key stand up and lock the trans up solid.

Tip number 4:
Use Redline racing oil for synchronized transmissions.

Hypoids and fortified oils with lots of zink compounds just defeat the synchronizers and help ruin the slider splines and synchrows faster. There you go. I just saved you some more money. If you cannot afford that just use a cheap conventional (Nonsynthetic) motor oil. Works almost as well.

5TH is an overdrive and is so close in ratio to 4th that a 3/5 shift will hurt nothing at all. Just a pain to do.

Lynn E. Hanover