Donovans Rio Red 94 GT Convertible Build

The size and weight difference is huge between the factory T5 and the T56 Magnum.




The D&D provided driveshaft

The old 23 tooth driven gear. The do not work with the factory 7 tooth drive gear only the 8, but somehow it kept working.

My old Centerforce clutch. It in pretty good shape after a nice pressure wash, although I have a RXT mcleod dual disc clutch that I am installing.

As much as I hated to do it.....I found a spot to install the AEM EGT sensor before the turbo and ground a little of the ceramic coating to get it welded on.

I have been getting a lot of asks about the ABS stuff so here is a few more pics of it's final resting spot. Its very close to the front of the frame rail now, but will clear the wastegate by at least 1/2".





In this pic (on the left toward the front of the car) you can see where I cut back the ABS bracket so i could get it to tuck close to the front frame. I took off about 1/2" to 1". I removed the ABS unit from its cradle to make this cut.





In these two, You can see where I created a square notch to hang the thing. Because there is a hook you will need this or you can mod the bracket.






As I mentioned I got the tranny in. I added a Mcleod twin disc RXT (which uses a stock style flywheel). I bought the full D&D kit which came with the crossmember brackets which I thought was the best way to go given the options. One thing to note here is that I didnt get the adapter plate that I have seen others use to allow a setback of the crossmember. Naturally, when I centered up the crossmember, it was apparent that the factory mounts would get in the way so I cut the entire factory mount out with a plasma and then ground down and air chiseled out whatever remained. I also had to cut off the outside of the u channel on the driver side crossmember mount due to the clearance of the GW subframe connectors, this was no biggy though since I was planning to weld them in anyway. All said and done, it looks good and I dont think i would have used the setback anyway assuming that there would be enough ground clearance without it. Luckily, the tranny is up where it needs to be for adequate ground clearance so the job is done. Overall, I feel like this setup is the way our cars should have been built from the factory.









You can see here that I had to clearance the front of the shifter opening area to clear the massive shifter. I ended up taking out about 2". Don't be like me and do this with an air chisel when the tranny is in the car!



And finished product all painted up...


Next week I will be working on finishing up the turbo install and doing some finish wiring of my EGT, the tach and the tranny harness and should have some more updates.

T56 Wiring

After doing some research and looking at the wiring situation i decided to rework the factory transmission harness and add the reverse lockout solenoid wiring.

Here is a pic of the finished harness with the reverse lockout added. I didnt lengthen the wires for either the VSS or the backup pigtail, but i mocked it up and set the loom lengths so that the harness would be on the driver side of the tranny away from the heat of the downpipe.



I was able to use pins 13 and 14:





Basically I added the pins to the factory barrel connector by drilling holes in the backing and then using the tps/vss style pins that I purchased from RJM. The cool part as I found is that pin 13 in that connector already goes to 53 on the ECM and pin 14 goes to 5 so I can use them with the accutach t56 solenoid timer inside the car without many extra harness mods. In fact the factory harness is wired for the A/T up to that barrel connector so there is a bunch of wires that could be repurposed for things like an EGT probe or Wideband 02 possibly with very little work and easy pinning without disassembling the harness. Might be worth checking out if you are starting from scratch and have a decent harness that you dont want to rewrap and wire.

Also for those of you who have GM harness pigtails and need to connect up the backup sensor and other tranny wiring for a Magnum T56 here is what you need to know:

Backup Sensor
---------------
Green connects to purple/orange ( +12v)
Brown connects to blk/pink (to backup lamp)

VSS
---------------
Stays as is, just move pickup assembly over from the T5

Backup (Reverse) Solenoid
---------------
Pink (+12v)
Green (Ground)