Leaning CAD software on top of 3D printing on top of adapter plate design was a lot to bite off all at once. With a quick download of FreeCAD I was able to plug in the coordinates and the external dimensions of my prototype to get the first glimpse at what I was up against.Īs it turns out I figured out that what I was up against was a pretty tough challenge. I completely lucked out and found the coordinates to the RX8 transmission bolt pattern online. Slicing parts into multiple pieces, printing them separately and manually fastening them together worked surprisingly well. Since I was actually trying to solve a problem and the alternatives were just as, if not more expensive, it seemed like a good excuse to pick one up.ģD printers that are large enough to print adapter plates in a single piece are still incredibly expensive. I had been interested in 3D printing ever since the technology became more mainstream but I just couldn’t justify the cost when I didn’t have a specific purpose for it. I needed a way to iterate on my design and have full confidence that when I handed it over to a machinist it would result in the part I needed. I had solicited a few quotes to have an adapter plate made based on my prototype but they were fairly expensive and I had so little faith in my design it seemed like a recipe for disaster. Once I had an initial prototype I had to make the decision how I was actually going to make the final product. On any sort of flat surface it is constantly on the brink of falling over and was the cause of much frustration considering I pulled the transmission on and off the engine what seemed like 100 times. Thankfully the RX8 transmission is fairly light (95-ish lbs) but it has to be one of the most ungainly and unbalanced objects I’ve ever worked with. It took a fair amount of trial and error but I was surprised how quickly I was able to put together something that allowed me to bolt the engine to the transmission. I used cardboard and MDF to mock up a prototype. In my mind both creating a custom adapter plate and using a non-RX8 transmission were equally challenging but in the end I figured the more stock parts the better since, lets be honest, I had no idea what I was doing at this point. The RX8 uses a power plant frame to mount the driveline so swapping in a transmission from another car would have meant I had to fabricate transmission mounts and potentially a custom driveshaft. There are a couple adapter plates available for mating k-series to rear wheel drive transmissions but I wasn’t too keen on the idea of swapping out the stock unit.
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