Bellhousing beef-up plate vs bellhousing brace

[Racer_X]

Either one will be an improvement over stock. That should be the main focus.

[jandoaudio]

All you are trying to do is constain the two shafts from pushing each other apart, thats why I like rays fix

[i3igpete]

i would rather have it transfer load directly to the case, rather than pull the other bearing even harder against the other shaft. but then again i dont know much about anything.

[jandoaudio]

Pete, explain your reasoning

My justification for using rays hoop is the minimal interference in such a light gauge structure whereas the plate is heavily welded and moves the stress to the thin outside edges near the already stressed mating surfaces.

Rays fix does cause higher bearing loads but it doesn't create the large HAZ and erratic loading of the plate.

Both methods seem to work well so its really just two engineers nerding out, but I'd like to hear your justification and could certainly be convinced otherwise

[mitsuman03]

Whos the genius that welded the other plate? I think I personally have covered this about 1000 times over and over again in about 20 different threads. If you intend on doing the entire plate, try to apply as LESS heat as possible..(aka all the welding) around the bearing casings. N2M welding in between the bearing case and the shaft bearing is completely pointless and useless, the two supports between there are plenty strong enough, if anything that made it worse then better buy pulling material away from the stack supports and grinding down all the supports in between..A slight bit of warping to any of those bearing cases will cause sever wear tear and some shit shifting over a short period of time....and possible vibration. Id be scared shit less knowing there was that much heat applied to that one with the plate (Even twisting of the bell housing is a possibility now that the 3 stock supports from the mold were grinned off). The less material taking off, the better, the more to weld/support too.......

[maTT]

We've had 3 of the plates come through the shop. They work really well for holding the power but they tend to warp the bellhousing and cause a lot of extra hours for final assembly to get it right. If you get the plate, assemble your tranny and bolt it to an extra block before you put it in the car. Once it is on the block, make sure you can still shift into all the gears.

[Racer_X]

The plates really need to be made in a way that the cross sectional area between the 2 bearing circles is maximized with as minimal of a HAZ as possible.Tht eplate also needs to be made so that it naturally pinches against the two bearing circles, and doesn't naturally pinch against the outer edges of the bell housing. That way you get a bit of "preload" on the plate without automatically adding extra stress to the outside of the bell housing. Also, it needs to be stress relieved (so it doesn't crack in the future and so it fits right). a LOT of the plates I have seen are not that great, but they are better than stock (the weld filler is stronger than the stock material :-P ). Ray's bracket is very to the point and should be fine to fix 99% of any problems people could have. it is also very difficult to F that up as no engineering design principles need to be applied to make it happen. You just put it in and tack weld it down. I still like how my bell housing plate came out the best, but a LOT of thought went into that. It's not exactly "mass production" or "commercial friendly" at all.

[306GTO]

Originally Posted by oohnoo

mmmmm looks like you guys have the same garbage can. So who's are they actually?

Bellhousing reinforcement PICS!

Ross (poster of that thread) owns the one with the plate, the other with the brace belongs to Shawn (almosn8kd).

[ray pampena]

the brace is only as stong as the thinest part. look at the 2 and notice the thin area on the other one (though strength is not an issue on either)

there is no more load on the bearings with mine. remember, the load is COMING from the shafts themselves. all load is going through the bearing at all times. problem is the housing seperating allowing the shafts to seperate.

goal; keep shafts from seperating without applying too much heat, wasting matetial that is ALREADY on one side of the break point. (ie. you have all kinds of added material sitting in the corners doing nothing.)
lastly, machining as little as possible.

both fixes work, any fix will work... mine i feel is the cleanest, nicer install


you can also buy the part and install yourself

Ray