ZF safety wire kit while the tranny is in the car

I dont think you can get the long bolts out of the inspection cover while the trans is in the car.
Jeff

Can someone send a pic of where the inspection cover is

Inspection cover is on the bottom rear of trans with drain plug in center. Can't remove in car

Here is a good link for safety wiring
http://pantera.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9550045562/m/7560063075

Check this out, I did mine a little while back, http://pantera.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9550045562/m/1350085745/p/1
Note: the long bolts underneath have shims between the case And bearing holders on the side, if these are left out you could crack the ears off during assembly retightening. If your good with a wrench this is no problem.


Mark

You cannot get the long cross-bolts out under the car as they run into the subframe rails & inner fender panels, and if you unbolted the ZF & engine from its mounts and jacked the thing up a couple of feet for clearance, you'd still be faced with working upside-down under a teetering, permanently dripping transaxle. Not all the lube drains out even in a week... Just pull the 155-lb ZF & bellhousing and put it on a bench or crate upside down. Then you don't even need to drain it, just cap the air relief. You'll need 10 drilled U.S-made bolts (the OEMs are too hard & brittle to drill & reuse), some 0.032" dia stainless aircraft safety wire, twisting pliers-either pro saftey-wire pliers or other, a clean rag to jam into the ring gear mesh while tightening/untightening the bolts (work on them two at a time) and a crowfoot socket for a torque wrench so the new bolts can be torqued into the ring gear properly with the reduced space inside the cases. The particular crow-foot socket you'll need will depend on which Pantera vendor you buy the bolts from (cheapest way is to buy a 'kit' of bolts & wire) and the size of your torque wrench- 3/8 or 1/2" drive. Figure on a week of evenings to do this necessary job.

thanks for the info.
the reason I ask is because my car is finally in the shop to have the motor installed and I just realized that I never had the bolts saftey wired.
I guess I have to make sure they do this for me on Monday.
thanks again
Robert

I did replace and safety wire the crown wheel bolts about a year ago. The bolts offered from several of the "Pantera" vendors where not the correct steel quality. Had to order the bolts from a UK suplyer in correct steel quality, and drill the holes in the heads myself. (no problem)
Also found that the "normal" torque wrench is not possible to use. Must be the "crowfoot" type.

quote:

(the OEMs are too hard & brittle to drill & reuse)

When Lloyd looked at photos of my safety wiring, he said they looked like stock bolts, and mentioned that is how Dennis Q did his wiring.

Might not be the best, but since they have been drilled, have not shattered and once safety wired, they can't back out, I see no need to redo them.

Larry

OEM ring gear bolts are serrated on the backs. The serrations are designed to dig into a surface to lock the bolt. But ring gear backsides are far too hard to allow the bolts to dig in, so the OEMs only offer reduced contact surface due to the serrations- which is not optimum. In addition, OEM ZF bolts seem to be over-hardened for the job, which makes them brittle. In this application, we want bolts that are more tough than hard, to handle impact loads. SAE Gr-5 (equiv. Euro gr-8.8) seem to work best. Finally, using 12-point super-bolts causes you to spend much time trying to find a crows-foot socket to fit them since room to torque bolts inside the cases is very limited. I suspect a 12-point user would have to make his own wrench. Lots of trouble for a questionable improvement- even pro-racers somehow got along without them.