1982 Lada Niva

[GoceKU]

I'm waiting for the turbo upgrade. Mike

I'm all for it, i have a few turbochargers, but i can't get a hold of an ECU and good injectors, i've melted down couple of engines messing around with DIY solutions and i can't buy any programmable engine management locally, buying them new is also out of my price range and when purchased online i have to pay import duty which is ridiculously expensive, for the immediate future i'll be going carburetor with higher compression, i'm trying to make this old design engine more efficient to take advantage from the higher octane fuels available here.

 

[GoceKU]

Weekend come but my workload did not come down i had only an hour now and then to spare so i used it to clean and paint the engine block, the original paint washed off. I could only find this shade of blue in hitemp paint it's very close to the pit's staircase and the parts cleaner. I used a small brash and painted on 2 coats of it. Let's hope it performs as good as it looks.

 

[GoceKU]

Today i finally had a day off and decided to spend it working on the engine for the little niva. Started my day with lots of cleaning, rockers, springs, adjusters, head bolts, camshaft, camshaft house and other pieces got washed. Then i clean the engine block again, clean the head gasket, clean the head and put it on top of the engine block, installed and torque the head bolts, assembled the camshaft and installed it, last thing i did was to install the breather, gearbox cover plate and a few other parts.

 

[GoceKU]

With the engine assembled i need to install the timing chain, so i need to finish the adjustable timing gear i started couple of weeks ago, i don't have a mill, and because of covid i don't have access to one so i had to finish it by hand. I marked it centre punch it then i drilled and threaded the holes, i also drill holes on both sides and used hand files to make the slots, it's not as nice but should do its job, at the end of the day its a lada

 

[GoceKU]

With the diesel cylinder head off to get skimmed i had few hours i can spend on the little niva, with the engine getting so close to finish i wanted to get the gearbox ready to get installed. So i drained the oil from it and it was bad, so i drain the oil from the other one and stood all 3 of the 5 speeds up, and took the inspection plates off seeing how dirty they all are i'm not installing it in like this, i'll probably take all 3 boxes apart mix and mach parts and make 2 good ones, one to install and one as spare. You can see they are pretty much a copy of a Fiat 124 gearbox but the russians have installed much bigger tooth gears, way overkill for a 75 hp engine.

 

[RandyWilson]

It looks to me like they went to a much wider ratio set. The front gear set that transfers power from the input to the cluster gear affects every gear but 4th. It appears that first one has the biggest gear that will clear the pan.

 

[GoceKU]

Transmission	5-speed, synchro units on all forward gears
Gear Ratios
1st	3.67
2nd	2.10
3rd	1.36
4th	1.00
5th	0.82
Reverse	3.53
Transfer case	two-gear, lockup differential
top gear ratio	1.2
bottom gear ratio	2.135
Final Drive ratio	4.3

4 speeds are the same only no 5 th, you can calculate the speeds it can go, its more like a tractor then a car. 27" tires and engines don't rev match pass 5000rpm.

 

[RandyWilson]

Yep, a bit wider spacing. Though not as much as I would expect.

 

[GoceKU]

After some time off i'm back working on the gearboxes, i started with making couple of gaskets, then i got my hands really dirty, one by one i disassembled all the gearboxes, they all had some problems, and all of them are incredibly dirty, the one that supposed to be in perfect running condition but had lots of metal in the oil, has the most damage, the input bearing has failed and the rest are not looking that much better, i'll be cleaning them one by one taking everything to bits, washing them, mismatching them to make the best one and second as a spare 5 speed gearbox. Its turning out to be impossible to find used parts that are in good shape, i'll have to be buying only new from now on.

 

[GoceKU]

Today after work i got in my overalls and got to cleaning gearbox parts. Got all 3 gearbox bodys cleaned the outside isn't spotless but from the inside they are clean. Then i started on the front shaft on the dirties gearbox that supposed to be "perfect" and it's definitely the worst, the front bearing has failed, and i traced the failure to the oil port on the gear being clogged one on the outside other on the inside, you can see the bearing has no cage. The sinhro also is somewhat worn, i'll see if the others are any better, this one won't be used any more. At this point i stopped, had to clean up some old tires.