Joey seems to have become the dedicated truth-finder on these 5-speed kits, and I came across one I hadn’t seen before.
I was searching for Realm wheels, and it appears (from their website) that they have become part of a conglomeration with a variety of other products.
One product listed on the website is this 5-speed kit, which uses a 1980’s Toyota Supra gearbox. It seems odd to engineer a kit around a 30+ year old gearbox, but hopefully they’ve got that figured out. The price seems reasonable.
The ad indicates the gear lever placement is correct for the application, so they must not be showing the E-type version.
Thanks guys will call tomorrow and start with calls tonight.
Look I hope all of them work BUT its a pain in the ASK project…
Lets see,this kit has nothing to do with my buddies kit.
PS I called back mr fiat…OY VEH, The kid called asking if the old transmission was a 4 speed.
Terrible.
gtjoey1314
Twenty five years, actually. There are two companies down under making conversion bellhousings and shifter kits. The shifter ends up further back no matter what. The box itself is marvelous…I had one in my '88 Supra. But boxes are scarce and parts sources are few. The question you need to ask is distance between the face of the bell and the shifter. The best choice is the W58. Here are the ratios:
Toyota W58 3.28 1.89 1.27 1.00 0.78 -
Toyota W55 3.57 2.06 1.38 1.00 0.85 -
Toyota W57 3.28 1.89 1.27 1.00 0.86 -
Toyota W59 3.95 2.14 1.27 1.00 0.85 -
Plenty of people have installed those in E-Types, but they do require some cutting to fit the rear mount. Lloyd Nolan has had one in his S2 OTS for about 10 years.
Realm kit is not the same as the much older Dellow kit AFAIK, although both use Toyota boxes. In a nutshell I’d say the Realm kit is cruder and cheaper, using an adapter concept like I used on the short 265 Getrag box from a BMW. Dellow would normally supply a custom bell housing, no?
The MC Wilkinson BMW and Realm Supra kits were/are the two ‘entry level’ 5-speed options IMO if you can get a good box and don’t mind some DIY. I did the BMW on my S2 OTS but a gearstick bracket broke during a Prescott hillclimb, leaving me in the wrong gear in a wet corner and I fishtailed off-piste…
Car got stolen Joey. On the Getrags the lever pivots in a steel bracket bolted to the back of the casing. To suit the E they make a forward-placed stick that clamps to the protruding selector rod but acts via a double heim joint rod, the front one of which pivots on a pin welded to a cross strip bolted to a couple of the bolts holding the casing together. It was satisfactory for gentle use but when snatching at the gears driving timed runs, the pin came off the weld. There was an East German guy called Stefan who used to bring a van with various bits to Stoneleigh twice a year but M&C Wilkinson probably have that mechanism and the speedo drive stuff etc. I still have an adaptor to fit Getrags to any Jag pattern bell. Heavy to post but fifty bucks if anyone wants to experiment.
Then the Realm kit would put the stick about three inches back.
Getrag 265 is also an obsolete transmission, I haven’t seen one in years. There was a shop called Metric Mechanic in Missouri that does rebuilds and upgrades on BMW transmissions. A plate and a few gadgets to move the shifter, and you have a conversion. Shift points aren’t a great match… A problem with both the Getrag and the Supra conversions is that the source cars are up and coming collectibles, so you have a lot of competition for limited spares. Here are the ratios for the entire Getrag family:
Realm is an old school type shop basically a one man band run by Adrian Cocking in the UK…he can provide a gearstick shifter houseing that bring the gearlever out in the correct E type position on the Supra box…Steve
Yes, I think that’s why MC Wilkinson stopped doing the kits, though they probably still do non-gearbox pieces. The 265 long tail version was used from 1984 on the XJS/XJ40 sixes but they swapped to integral bell 290 boxes around 1990 when the 4.0L/3.2L AJ6 capacities came in, and sold quite a few manuals in Europe right up to 1997 and the arrival of the AJV8.
The XJS Brochure on the old site lists the ratios as 3.573; 2.056; 1.39; 1.0 and 0.76.
I’ll add those ratios to my notes, but I still don’t think first gear is too low for an E.
Distance from the face of the transmission to center point of the shifter should be 12". Remember that the shifter bump on the console is very small, so less or more will require mods.
This is the transmission for the non turbo Supra which in the 3rd generation cars produced 200 hp and 196 ft pounds of torque, so the transmission is somewhat marginal for the XK engine. Toyota chose to upgrade the trans for the turbocharged cars, and I’d think you would want the transmission from that car where hp and torque are more like the XK numbers.
Twenty five years ago I had a '87 Ser III Supra turbo charged car with the 5 speed. It was relatively low mileage but the 2nd gear synchro was toast. I recall 5th gear was about a .90 ratio and didn’t do much for rpm. You might want to check what this transmission has before you buy it.
I already posted the ratios. The OD on a W58 is .78. XK engines don’t really produce 265 hp gross, and the net horsepower was under 200. The non-turbo supra produced 200 NET.
The 7M-GE Supra 6 (3rd gen) motor might have comparable peak HP, but I feel has a lot less torque especially at lower RPM’s. The long stroke, much larger displacement, and smaller valve area of the XK engine (compared to the 7M-GE) is what gives it that tractor-like pull common to so many big straight sixes of the era.
That torque is what I’d be worried about in a W58 box that wasn’t totally healthy (or not a turbo-spec box.)
I had a stock 4.2l engine, newly rebuilt, on an engine dyno 20 years ago and it produced 165 - 200 hp, depending on needles, timing etc, but it also produced 270 - 280 ft pounds of torque at 3200 rpm, even on UM needles. I suspect that would be a killer of that non turbo supra box.
Mike you’re right about the ratio and your posting, my language was clumsy, I meant that he should check the ratio on the turbo box if he’s looking for one.
