Why Would I Make This Part?

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:01]This video is mostly blo vlog. I think they call it vlog or blog. Vlog video vlog style. Debbie is out today. The girls are taking her for her birthday to a spa or something. I'm not real sure.

[00:00:18]But while she's gone, I'm going to be doing the filming myself. So, you get to see my crappy work along with my crappy had a transmission issue at sick week.

[00:00:35]I hear the sirens in town. It's Monday and the sirens are blowing. I guess they've decided to test the sirens, the tornado sirens. Anyway, the uh transmission had an issue, of course. That's our nemesis, right?

[00:00:55]Transmissions.

[00:00:57]Um, we pulled it out and we put the spare one in. Well, the spare one had the billet.

[00:01:08]I hate piece of crap pump. Let me show you that.

[00:01:15]It's nice made piece. It's awesome. As far as workmanship, it just there's something wrong in the valve timing.

[00:01:27]You can. And this one's been actually this isn't the one. The one's still in the transmission. This one's been done as well. This valve has been rettimed, meaning that the lands have been cut to try to get converter charge pressure where it needs to be. The one that's in the car was also cut by two different people.

[00:01:53]And it's got that billet pump in it, too. and I just hate it. There's two very expensive billet pumps that are basically going away in my world.

[00:02:06]There's a couple pump halves that I have machined for big shafts.

[00:02:13]Um, let me show you. There's a couple more and one that I was learning on last time and I made some mistakes.

[00:02:25]So, I've got some pumps from Jake Shoemake, Jake's Performance, and from Allen Pope, Alan Pope Racing Transmissions. Those two pumps that I just showed you on that vacuum cleaner, those are going to Allen Pope so he can use He sent me five and I'm keeping three and sending him two back. And the reason for so many is cuz I'm learning. I mean, I've made these pumps.

[00:03:13]The they're snap ring together. They're bitching. I've got all the tricks, bells, whistles, everything done to them. I've got a lot of time in them machining them and I've learned a lot. The first one, the first two that I did, one of them isn't usable. I made a mistake. The second one we used, it was in that transmission, but I didn't machine it tight enough.

[00:03:45]I've had three big tube cast pumps and all three of them have failed. two of them by other people, two different companies, one of them by me. All three of them failed, and I finally figured out what's going wrong. So, I've machined them tighter, pressed them tighter, made them really good. I'm excited to try it. But before I I freshened this transmission up, the one that we we took out wasn't really uh we didn't have clutch problems or anything like that. It was my pump that failed. And the reason it did was because that stator tube was loose in the pump. You could wiggle it. And if the stator tube is loose, there's a massive leak right around there. I machined this not realizing how important the press fit was and evidently the others didn't know that either because two other people's did the same thing. Now this this goes back 20 17 I think my first one and it's upstairs.

[00:04:58]It's out of my Nova and getting ready to go back in. But I'll probably use one of these pumps in it instead of that, the one that's in it, because that stator shaft came loose. And at the time, I didn't know how critical it was. I didn't know what was wrong. I, you know, had no idea.

[00:05:14]Now I've gone through so many of them that I realized what's wrong and I've I'm addressing that. But so I'm putting the spare trans back together. Clutches really weren't hurt. I went ahead and put some directs in it, but I would have ran them. I have new ones. So, I put them in there.

[00:05:33]When the pressure dropped because of that pump, it wasn't didn't go away. It was just erratic. It would it fluctuate.

[00:05:41]And that pressure drop concerned us. So, we pulled the transmission, put the spare in. Didn't really hurt that transmission. It was just that pump shaft getting loose. So, Alex is really up on watching the data on that. She can predict what's going to happen. So, that one I went ahead and put new direct clutches in it. And what I'm doing is I'm setting it up. We've got a valve coming. This is one Jake's Performance. I'm going to put two valves here cuz I've got an internal dump. You saw that last time. And we use the external dump as well. And I'm going to set them up exactly the same. So, it's when I unbolt or when we take one out in the event of having to change transmission, I don't have to change anything. I'm literally going to throw the bell housing on it and put it in the car. It'll be ready to go with just plug it in and go. So, we haven't had that before. We have just a spare transmission. We got to change all that plumbing and all the valves. It's just a pain. And I've never had my new the spare transmission didn't have a temp sensor in it and it doesn't have a front drain plug. I've got to do that as well today. And the dipstick. So that brings me to what I'm going to show you here.

[00:07:02]I'm going I made that dipstick. I'm getting ready to make a second one. And why would I do that when you can buy a dipstick for 50 bucks or whatever?

[00:07:14]Because I don't want to order it first.

[00:07:17]Second, I don't like the little lever.

[00:07:20]Not in this car because the fluid's right there next to her. Let me show you. See if I can see under here. It's dark.

[00:07:28]So, the one that's in there, you see that tube and it's got the dash 12 cap on it. That cap screws on. I made this one in haste a long time ago and we usually just pop it out and share the dipstick. And you see there's no I've got to machine this better. I cut that at at Mickey Thompson last year in fact.

[00:07:50]Well, what was it? No, it was this year when we went testing there. I cut that with a cut off wheel and broke the fins off because this transmission never been in the car before. And I've got a brace in my belly pan that hits that. So, I got to fix that. I got to put a sensor in it. And I'm going to put a drain plug here cuz as you can see, the front of that pan is lower than the back of the pan. So that puts our fluid at an odd angle. U factory calibrated dipstick would not work because this is special.

[00:08:20]It's a race car. It needs special stuff.

[00:08:23]And I made that dipstick and it's great except when I use a funnel.

[00:08:31]I'm demonstrating and I put the funnel in. It's hitting the the firewall and electronics. So, I have to bend it back and it it doesn't go down in the tube very far and it's it leaks when we force it in like that. So, I'm making new dipsticks and I angled it back a little bit. And I can only angle it back so far because the the stick that's going to go in here wouldn't go through all of this.

[00:08:56]And I'll show you why. But I haven't made the actual stick yet. What I'll do is drill a hole in this, put the appropriate length stick in it, and weld it on top like I did that one out there.

[00:09:08]It'll go down in, and my fluid level has to be higher because it's at an angle at the front than a calibrated factory dipstick. So, I'm getting ready to make another dipstick cuz I'm going to make a better one for that pan out there.

[00:09:23]Looking for this Allen wrench. And I'm going to put two in just alike. So, I'm going to take you on that little experiment. And here's why I can't just Let me take this rubber off of here. Can't just put a uh any angle you want on it. I don't know if you can see that. So, that the hole down here is only seven is only/ inch. That looks bigger than a half inch. Let me zoom back out.

[00:09:59]That hole is half inch. So, that tube is much larger. And I made a mistake on this one, I'll admit to you.

[00:10:08]I should have thought ahead and put this fitting in the lathe and drilled it out.

[00:10:13]So, I've got two more. I'm going to cut this one off. I can save it. It's not a problem. But, it doesn't fit every funnel.

[00:10:22]So, there's no reason. I'm not worried about high pressure. It's just a cap.

[00:10:26]But the beauty is that cap screws on. If she's ever has trouble, you know, the cap is staying on. It's not a rubber dipstick, you know, a OEM type thing with a flip lever on it. I don't want that inside the car with her. So, I'm going to cut this off and put a new one on. I'm going to drill that fitting first. I can't put that back in the lathe because of my bracket.

[00:10:49]And then we'll make another one. And I'm going to get that transmission out. That one is the one with the billet piece of crap pump. We put it in on sick week because this one started having the fluid pressure problems. You know, we just noticed it. It wasn't didn't really affect anything. It's just we didn't want to burn the transmission up. So, we threw this one in, which was a fresh transmission with a freshly modified valve.

[00:11:17]But the problem with doing stuff like that, the only way to know if it works is to prove it. You got to go out, put it in the car, and test it. And we do a lot of testing like that. It's time consuming, and we don't really have time. We always do it when we're in the heat of the moment in a race. So, it didn't work. The fluid pressure on the converter is not what it needs to be.

[00:11:39]You can put it on a dyno, which is just a a freaking educated guess. The dyno will not replicate that car going down the drag strip. So down the drag strip, if we don't have enough fluid pressure in the converter, it will slip the converter more than it's supposed to or more than it can has to. So we want more pressure. I won't tell you those numbers, but we know what kind of pressure we want going down track. This one didn't make it. It makes it down low, but it doesn't make it going down track. So, I'm taking that junk billet pump out and putting these cast pumps in both of these transmissions and making them as exact as I can to each other.

[00:12:22]You actually lose ET and mile per hour when the fluid pressure is not high enough. That's why lockup converters, people use lockups. And we're going to go to a lockup soon or pretty soon, but it's they're a pain in the neck if you um I don't I don't even know if I want to go to a lockup. Fluid pressure kind of replicates that. If we have enough pressure in the converter, it will get tighter and it will the car will go faster. It also puts thrust on the engine bearings. So, those of you who are thinking that's an issue, you're kind of right, but not exactly. It's not really a problem with a big block Chevy.

[00:13:05]It's a problem with a freaking LS. And I'm not an LS. I'm not going to have an LS. I hope I never have another LS, but that's beside the point.

[00:13:17]So, you know, we can have fluid pressure on the converter. That's not a problem for us. We've never heard of thrust bearing, but that's what I'm doing.

[00:13:28]Let's get that transmission out. Let's get these dipsticks made. I got to pull I did one other thing.

[00:13:36]When this shaft when this tube, stator tube became loose, it knocked the bushing out of the stator tube. And I found a and it's a special bushing because it's a um big shaft, inch and an eigh shaft. It's an eighth inch bigger. So a standard pump is small, tiny. I'll show you that later. But there's a bushing back here.

[00:14:00]And I accidentally I made these three pumps and leave it to me. The one that I decided to install in the transmission was the one that the bushing got knocked out of.

[00:14:11]It's just a little bushing that presses in here and guides that that front shaft. It's not a great big deal.

[00:14:19]There's one in there. That's why I didn't notice it, but it's loose. It's spun and it loosened it up. Problem is, I found another bushing that's almost the same.

[00:14:33]You can see it's narrower.

[00:14:36]That one's out of a different tube. It's narrower and it's smaller. ID and I was honing it.

[00:14:44]I put it in, but it's not tight and there's no wear on the tube. The tube is bigger inside diameter and the bushing does not go in tightly. These two here, they're even in different places. That's a/ inch down. That's 5/8 or more down.

[00:15:05]It doesn't matter cuz there's that much bushing area on the shaft. But I'm going to take a piece of brass because I don't have time to order a bushing.

[00:15:15]Nick had this brass. I'm going to chuck it in the mill because I can't chuck square in my lathe and do it without changing the chuck and that's too time consuming. I'm going to make the OD proper. I'm going to bore the ID and then I'm going to get it close on the ID. I'm going to press it in. I'll hone it and make it fit the shaft and put this to bed. All right. What I'm doing is I put the block of brass in. I'm using my Himer here that I just got a couple weeks ago or a couple days ago.

[00:15:47]So, this probe will work X, Y, and Z.

[00:15:54]I'm not going to use Z on this machine, but what I'm doing is finding the exact center of that block in Y. And then I'll whatever that measurement is, I'll come off of the end of X the same distance and that will be the center of the hole that I'm going to use.

[00:16:31]It seems to be working.

[00:17:10]Well, here's the final result.

[00:17:13]I didn't cut it completely out because I didn't want it to chatter or the bit vibrate into the bushing and mess it up. This is more than enough for two bushings. So, I'm going to cut it out on the band saw and then probably put it in a lathe and split it. Let me see what I want to do once I cut it out on the band saw.

[00:17:42]Let's start by machining these bungs.

[00:17:48]I'm going to put it in this direction.

[00:17:50]I'd rather machine it from the other direction, but I want to see that there's a little taper left on it for the cap to seal. This particular funnel is my one that hangs on the wall all the time. That that would take 650,000.

[00:18:05]And I'm not opposed to it being fairly tight. Okay, I've got a 2130 seconds here. Let's drill it out to that. You know what? I think I've got a counter synink bit installed in my chuck right now.

[00:18:21]Let's go ahead and run that in there a little ways.

[00:18:30]And that will give me it something besides that sharp hole to like that to be just a little more centered. You know what I'm going to do?

[00:18:44]I'm going to put the live center in so I can center that up a little bit.

[00:19:00]Let's put that in. Start it again.

[00:19:08]That centered that puppy right away. I'm going to tighten it down just a little bit more.

[00:19:17]Now, let's put this the uh taper tool in there.

[00:19:27]and just cut a little bit on.

[00:19:36]Let's turn that down.

[00:19:46]I don't care how big the hole is. It can be bigger.

[00:19:51]Let's see what that is.

[00:19:54]653,000.

[00:19:57]Oh, that's more than enough. So, let's call that good right there.

[00:20:04]And drill it out. I probably should drill at 11/16 rather than 20 and 32, but my thought is that this bit will I can kind of push the funnel in there.

[00:20:21]It'll help seal it when I'm pouring fluid.

[00:20:26]I have some WD40 handy, so I'm just going to use it.

[00:20:31]I've got cutting fluids as well.

[00:20:57]Okay, I should have done this yesterday on the first one, but I didn't.

[00:21:05]I did not think about it. That's why.

[00:21:13]Now you can see the difference in the two.

[00:21:20]Let's see how it fits the funnel.

[00:21:24]Oh, that's nice. So, if I use this funnel and my other funnels are smaller, they'll actually fit in the half inch hole, but this one will be perfect.

[00:21:33]That'll make it fill faster. So, let's do the other one the same, and then we'll move on to the next step.

[00:21:48]Take a piece of 180 sandpaper.

[00:21:52]Get that sharp edge.

[00:21:56]It doesn't need to be razor sharp.

[00:22:34]Much better.

[00:22:39]Next step. This is just made from scraps that I had laying around. So, I just happen to have another piece of tubing long enough that I can make a second one. And I'll cut this end off. We'll make this bracket. Bend it. And we'll make this. This is made out of billet one inch, I believe. I hope I have another piece of that. We're gonna cut this tube to length. I'm going to make them exactly the same.

[00:23:09]Okay, I found the piece that I cut off of cut this one off of. So, the thing is it's already should have the right angle on it. See, I it came off of here. Well, actually this way.

[00:23:24]So, let's see if I did cut it twice is the only reason I'm questioning it. But I believe that's exactly right.

[00:23:35]Drawback though, I can't do that. We're going to have to drill it and do a new one and not use the angle because I there's not enough there to chuck. There is, but it's sketchy. So, I'm going to start with the tube. Let's put the tube in.

[00:23:58]Get you guys where you can see.

[00:24:05]I keep sandpaper sitting around. Sticky DA paper.

[00:24:12]My favorite thing. This piece has seen better days.

[00:24:18]So, I'm going to start by polishing all the corrosion off of here.

[00:24:25]Let's get this drill bit out of the way, too.

[00:24:43]Heat.

[00:25:06]Heat.

[00:25:16]I may not have cleaned enough of that.

[00:25:19]Let's come out a little bit further.

[00:25:22]Got to have room to cut it off. Yeah, I got I got enough there.

[00:25:27]Go back in a little. Put our cut off parting tool in the lathe. I'm going to get the end just a little more.

[00:25:56]I'm going to do like the Indian show that I see.

[00:26:02]I'm going to use a pencil, a ink pen.

[00:26:06]I'm not getting down to CNC stuff here.

[00:26:13]It's critical, but it isn't that critical.

[00:26:26]You guys can see.

[00:26:28]Let me set you up where you can actually see how good a parting tool works if you haven't ever seen it before.

[00:26:52]Nice square cut.

[00:26:57]Nice clean. I don't have enough for another one.

[00:27:05]Now I'm going to take the one in solid bar stock.

[00:27:10]And again, the reason for making this is just because I don't want to wait. I don't like what's available and is that's what I do. I have I have stuff to make stuff.

[00:27:30]I look around, see what I have laying around, and I make something out of it.

[00:27:36]And when I see a piece of something that I think might be useful down the road later, I'll save that piece. That's what all this is. This is a piece of conduit.

[00:27:49]No telling how long I've had that.

[00:27:52]Now, what I'm going to do is hold this up here.

[00:27:58]I want them the same. Otherwise, I do like the Indians. I just make something that looks close.

[00:28:07]I'm going to actually scoot that out.

[00:28:12]I'm going to turn my tool.

[00:28:15]This is unorthodox, but that's okay cuz that's what I do.

[00:28:21]I'm going to set this angle based on my other one, which is just I just turned the tool. I didn't measure anything. I don't need to get down here where I can get in.

[00:28:38]I put a taper on the seat of this because it tapers against the I'll show you in a minute. It seats against the factory GM rubber seal and that's funneled down in. So I put a taper on this one. So I'm going to put it on this one as well.

[00:29:04]I've already marked that.

[00:29:13]You know what? I'm going to drill it first.

[00:29:20]I almost got the card ahead of the horse, but I'm good at that, especially when I'm filming.

[00:29:28]Usually I've got Debbie here so I don't have to think about filming and camera angles.

[00:29:39]Put a center drill in. Yeah, my chuck's worn out. I need a new one. New chuck piece.

[00:29:57]Good enough, as my old employee would say.

[00:30:03]Now, I used I believe a half inch bit.

[00:30:07]Let me find that 1/2 in bit.

[00:30:14]No, I actually used a 7/16.

[00:30:17]I remember now.

[00:30:28]I machined or ran this thing more, I would have the new chuck. But I honestly once I'm done, this is a tool for me.

[00:30:36]I'm in a hurry. I don't ever think about ordering one.

[00:31:00]That's about an inch and a4 in. I'm going to go just another 1/4 to 3/8.

[00:31:10]There a quarter. I'm going to go ahead and go 38. The one I did up there, I didn't drill it deep enough. And I had to go back and redrill it at finish drilling it. So this is going back in drill box. Got that done. Let's speed the lathe back up.

[00:31:32]SW Check our length.

[00:32:11]I'm going to go another 16th of an inch.

[00:32:18]Let's take another cut.

[00:32:41]Let's get our calipers. I made this one, if I remember, 625 is 626. That's close enough. I'm going to set the dial to zero.

[00:32:52]See, the dial spins fairly free. So, now we're set at zero.

[00:33:02]I can turn in 100. And I always go a little conservative.

[00:33:10]I'll cut in 100 100 and measure it again.

[00:33:15]So 20 40 60 80 100 Now I'm looking for one 27ish 126ish. That's 136ish.

[00:33:52]So I need that extra 10 or 11,000.

[00:34:01]So, let's go in another 10.

[00:34:13]I go 10 because 11 makes it a little bit loose. It's not loose, but 10 will make it a little more tight. Press fit in the seal.

[00:34:31]I don't want to have to put sealer on here ever.

[00:34:42]126. All right. What I'm going to do now is I'm not even going to use a tool. I'm going to get old school here. Watch this.

[00:35:04]Heat. Heat.

[00:35:25]I'm going to use my deburring tool. I'm just going to put it in the end. Spin it by hand.

[00:35:33]Compare the two.

[00:35:36]Perfect a Mundo.

[00:35:39]So, that part's finished.

[00:35:42]I just have to cut it.

[00:35:46]I'll weld it onto this tube and then we'll weld those pieces on that we drilled out the bungs.

[00:35:56]All right, let's take this stuff over to the band saw, the big band saw, and cut it off. I love band saws.

[00:36:11]It's probably my favorite tool. It's like prehistoric CNC.

[00:36:18]The cavemen did stuff with rocks and they discovered brass and bronze and had that era or error as you like might want to say. But let me get a pair of vice grips.

[00:36:33]This big meat cutting blade will spin this aluminum and cut your frigin fingers off. That thing will cut aluminum and wood like nobody's business. So, I'm just going to guess at the angle. Looks like I got about a/4 in here and about 38 of an inch here. It's not that crisp.

[00:37:22]I was being very cautious there cuz if I push it too fast and it'll go really fast, I slip. clip. I'm going to lose a finger. So, I'm going to sand this debur. I'm going to put this back in the lathe and I'm going to counter synink that. So, it's got a hole kind of like this cuz this is as big a hole pretty much as I can have. I don't want this to be fragile and make it thinner. So, to have any kind of a dipstick and to go through at that angle. So, it's going to go straight down. It's going to come through that little tube at an angle.

[00:37:55]So, I'm gonna set it off same way I did this one. It's flush back here and set off here. But, I'm going to counter sync that so when I'm pushing the dipstick in, it doesn't hit bottom.

[00:38:09]Got sidetracked there. Debbie was getting a birthday cake.

[00:38:14]She's not even here, but she was getting a birthday cake delivered.

[00:38:18]I'm always kind of weird with that. I don't know if she was Uber Eats. I have no idea what this girl was. She brought a cake and a bag. Looked like it came from the store.

[00:38:32]Very odd.

[00:38:37]I have no idea what she could have done to that cake. Not that she would, but you never know anymore.

[00:38:49]Okay.

[00:38:58]Let's counter bore that just a little bit. Counter synink it.

[00:39:08]Taper it. Whatever word you want to use, you're welcome to use it.

[00:39:24]When you're making yours, you can call it whatever you want to call it. All right. The whole idea, so when a tube or a rod, not a tube, I don't have one here, but if you're putting this in, it's going to be going in at an angle, it's going to hit. So, I'm going weld that tube offset on this. So, it's it's going to work good.

[00:39:48]All right, I've got my pieces all cut except for the bracket. I cleaned these with bleach white and a brass wire brush. And I cleaned any oil and contamination WD40 that I was using for cutting fluid off. We're going to take it over there and tack it together. And then we're going to take our modified weld bung, weld it together like that.

[00:40:10]Then we're going to cut this one off and weld the new one on and make a bracket.

[00:40:19]I can reuse this this bung because I'm going to cut it off. Just reuse the pipe, weld the new one on, and this one's not hurt.

[00:40:51]Let's weld the one. Let's I say some weird stuff.

[00:41:12]Okay, let's weld the first one back together. We can put him aside and be done with it.

[00:41:29]Find a small 116th welding rod. Here we go.

[00:42:10]Okay, there's the original one or the first one. Now, let's put the second one together.

[00:42:19]I'm going to tip this to where it's in the vice straight.

[00:42:27]Tack this tube on.

[00:42:30]Make sure I'm doing it right. Yep.

[00:42:53]I'm going to go cool that off so I can handle it.

[00:43:00]There's all the parts for two dipsticks.

[00:43:03]All we have to do now is make the bracket and bring it over here and tack it. I'm going to actually put the dipstick in and tack that bracket on the transmission because I don't have a fixture. These are the only two I'm ever going to make. But there's two that are exactly the same. It's going to be nice.

[00:43:19]Now, when this is got the dipstick installed in the cap, I always just keep a -12 wrench handy. And that's sealed.

[00:43:29]That dipstick's not going to come open in the race or a crash or whatever. It's just a sealed setup. I really like them.

[00:43:37]Like I mentioned, I make stuff out of stuff that's laying around. You see, look at the buckets. This is my aluminum saw here. So, I've got buckets of scrap aluminum. This is all stuff that I've cut. I threw a ton of it away, but I've got, if you could see over here, let's see if I can zoom in. I've got lots of new stock as well, but you can make a lot of stuff out of scrap.

[00:44:04]So, this is a piece of angle iron that was left over from the the COE bed. Man, that doesn't look like the camera's aiming in the right place. I'm going to cut a piece of this.

[00:44:19]This is a piece of it was about 3/16 on one side, 1/4 in on the other. So, I'm going to use it to make my the 3/16 side to make the bracket.

[00:44:45]I'll see if I can kind of replicate what I have here.

[00:45:13]Okay. So, I've drawn that out.

[00:45:30]Heat.

[00:45:44]Heat.

[00:46:00]We'll have to bend it and drill it and then bend it. But first, I'm going to go there and sand the edges. Cut sand that rough saw mark off.

[00:46:11]Now I've got a piece of quarter inch.

[00:46:16]So, pretty good stuff left.

[00:46:33]Heat.

[00:46:36]Heat.

[00:46:43]All right, there's my this nice sanded edge bracket.

[00:47:06]Next step, drill a hole.

[00:47:41]I'm going to debur the hole and then we're going to bend it.

[00:47:49]I'm just going to throw it in the little break over here.

[00:47:56]I'm going mark it kind of where I bent this one. So, I just need enough room here to put a bolt.

[00:48:08]So, let's go over there and whack it about that same angle.

[00:48:22]That's the old Nova motor, the one that we used in the wedding video.

[00:48:27]But I'm building a brand new one with the exception of the heads. I'm going to reuse these heads, but I'm building a new block. Actually, I'm going to reuse the crank that was in that's in there now.

[00:48:42]But I'm going to have new rods, new pistons, new block, new cam lifters. That's a pretty good guess.

[00:48:53]That's exactly right.

[00:48:56]So now I'm going to clean it and get that ink off of it so I can bolt it on the transmission and weld it.

[00:49:05]This hole here in the side of the transmission right there was already there. It was tapped, but it's tapped for I don't even know what. I didn't check that close. A number 10 or number 12. It was small. I just drilled it out with a number seven bit and tapped it with a/420.

[00:49:35]That's nice and tight. Let's take a rubber hammer.

[00:49:40]Knock it down in just a little bit more.

[00:49:48]And the bracket's not exactly right. Let me see. Maybe I can adjust it.

[00:49:57]I don't want my dipstick leaning forward any more than I have to. So, I'm not going to put a bind on it. Not much of one anyway. I'm going to weld the gap cuz I like it being back. So, the funnel is behind the firewall. That's been a pet peeve ever since I built this thing is the the and I just made it just it's straight. The one that's in the car, this is all straight. This one here, I put that angle in there. So, I'm going to go get the welder. Okay, we got everything in place.

[00:50:31]I'm just going to get down here and make sure everything's lined up like I want it. Which, let's see. I might want to turn the dipstick a little there. That's absolutely perfect.

[00:50:57]I'm going to hook this ground onto the bell housing rather than the tube so I don't distort the tube.

[00:51:06]Let's tack it right here.

[00:51:51]By doing it that way, I'm assured that the dipstick will fit.

[00:51:57]I haven't drilled the other hole in the transmission, but I know they're in the same place. So, if I was doing multiples, I'd make a jig, but I'm not.

[00:52:06]I'm doing two.

[00:52:08]Let's move the welder back over and go finish welding that up and move on. The point of this is you could make this in your garage yourself. You may not be able to weld aluminum and machine stuff, but a 7/16 cheap socket is the same as that. I tried it. It'll fit down in the tube tight. You could use a piece of electrical conduit and a steel bung and you could make your own if you needed such a thing. You can even make it longer. You can bend it, shape it however you want.

[00:53:19]Okay, that looks decent enough for our hot rod.

[00:53:24]I'm not trying to be the best welder on the internet. I'm more in the the function over form.

[00:53:33]Now, let's see if this all fits together. I slid the grommet onto the tube. It's very tight. I want to show you something, though. I made mention that you could make your own. You could use, you know, 3/4 in EMT or 1/2 in electrical tubing.

[00:53:49]And I said you could use a 7/16 socket.

[00:53:51]Here's a Snap-On laying here, but you know, anybody else's would be the same.

[00:53:56]That fits very tight. When you put it in the transmission, it fits like my tube does. You could weld a piece of EMT onto a socket, cut the socket off, and make your own out of steel, which the one in that car out there is steel.

[00:54:16]And you could make any shape you want.

[00:54:19]You would have to buy a dipstick, but or get one out of an old car and you'd calibrate it to your transmission, which you should do anyway. Never trust those Chinese dipsticks.

[00:54:33]Jake Schoemaker has a great video on it.

[00:54:36]I just happened to see it this morning about calibrating dipsticks. So, typically if the transmission's angled the direction that it would be in most cars, downhill slightly, the pan, you would want the fluid level about a/4 in above the pan rail, just up this side of the gasket. I'm going to put ours a half inch above because our transmission tips this direction, so it's going to read higher on a dipstick at the front than a standard transmission setup would. So, when I make the dipstick, which I think what I'm going to do, like I told you, I make stuff from what I have. I don't have any quarter inch round stock aluminum, which is what's in that one out there. So, I'm going to take a quarter inch uh quarter by two or whatever I have over there square and just cut a quarter inch square stock, drill a hole in the top, let it stick down in transmission, measure it, mark it, and powder coat it.

[00:55:38]I've got some powder paint and I'm going to put it I'm going to dip it and heat it with a heat gun torch uh maybe even a torch and melt it on there just so it stays black and I can see the fluid on it just a little bit better hopefully cuz the fluid usually goes clear after it's been run a while. Like I said, I make stuff from nothing.

[00:56:08]I think I'm going to take this piece of plate.

[00:56:13]Just mark it 1/4 in and saw a dipstick out of it.

[00:56:44]Heat.

[00:56:53]Heat.

[00:57:15]I used a different piece cuz I wanted three factory edges.

[00:57:20]So, I'll go sand the rough edge off and then we're going to bead blast them and powder coat. Well, we'll weld them into the caps first and then we'll powder coat them. Hopefully the powder coat semi- gloss cuz that'll make the fluid stick more. But I'm hoping that if I bead blast them that that'll help.

[00:57:45]I'll just drill an appropriate size hole and weld that straight down. So, let's sand them up just a little bit.

[00:58:07]Heat. Heat.

[00:58:35]Next, I'm going to put that bung that I cut off in the mill in the lathe here and tighten this cap to it.

[00:58:45]And then I'm going to put the cap in the lathe.

[00:58:50]And the reason for this is that center floats. I can't clamp this and drill that center. It's It's not fixed in there.

[00:59:07]I'm going to measure diagonally across these points. And that's 371 and a half. So a 38 bit will just work right for that.

[00:59:59]There we have it. I'll weld that in.

[01:00:02]Powder coat this thing. That'll be our dipstick.

[01:00:08]Let's do another one.

[01:00:21]Two dipsticks. I made it extra long sticking out so I don't question whether it's got fluid on it. you know, if if I made it real short, I couldn't tell how much, you know, is there any in there?

[01:00:34]Is there just a quart low? So, it sticks out extra long, kind of like a factory dipstick would. And I decided to not powder coat it because I sanded it with the sander and it's really rough, so the fluid will stick to it. And if it's green, I mean green, if it's red, it'll show up really good. And I put a notch, an actual groove in the dipstick.

[01:00:59]So, I think that's going to work good.

[01:01:01]This one's for the other transmission.

[01:01:04]There's one in here.

[01:01:08]I just welded the tops on. Those actually hammered in the hole and I welded them on. So, they're both set up, calibrated, and ready to go.

[01:01:21]So, now it's time to make a bushing for that front pump. uh shaft for that stator too. But that's pretty nice. I like that. I like that better than anything I can buy from the store.