R200/bwt-5 swap to r180 STI diff

[madkaw]

There will probably be other folks dealing with what I am now, so I thought I would post up my findings. In the true spirit of Hybrid I have a mixed combo of parts. L24 hooked to a 82/bwt-5 trans running with the dedicated t-5 driveshaft to a r200. If you are running the bwt-5 driveshaft your aware that it had it's own particular driveshaft. So swapping to the STI/r180 from a r200/bwt-5 presents a few issues. No longer can I just swap out the pinion flange on the diffs, because of the difference in pinion diameter. Since I am running the t-5 driveshaft, it's body diameter is larger than a stock driveshaft which makes welding a different end on the driveshaft diificult, at best. So I layed my driveshaft yoke up to the subby pinion flange and realize that there is plenty of meat to redrill this flange. The other very nice thing I notices was that the driveshaft yoke cenetering ring fits perfect into the subby flange. That raised ring on the end of your driveshaft yoke that helps center and keep the shaft centered so the bolts will line up is the same!! In other words, it will be much easier to drill since the parts are concentric to each others pinions. I took the two pinion flanges from the two different diffs to my machinist and he agreed with me that a simple bushing could be made to center the two flanges to each other, than it will just be a matter of tranfering bolt patterns. I like this idea since I am keeping the subby flange with the subby diff.

 

Hope this helps someone.