Riding The Tranny

Another car weekend. Saturday was spent cleaning rust off the camshafts, and since I had a spare and the work was more than halfway done already, I changed the headgasket. So come Sunday the engine was together and ready to fit the transmission and reinstall. This would definitely need more bodies to manhandle. Tranny work always involves some muscle. Finally got that purdy clutch on. Last time we’ll see it like this. Tranny mated with minimal fuss and bolted together. Ckucky with his 1 ACP (Angry Chinese Power) output installs the starter, and strips out one of the holes. To be fair he was torquing with wrench set to spec. I think I might need a new wrench.

I happen to have the correct Helicoil kit and here is Fabio inserting it. Oh yeah, forgot the adventure we had with the broken clutch slave cylinder bolt. I’d been shooting it with Kroil every time I happen to walk past it with the can handy.  So the first thing we tackled was trying to use a screw extractor on it. We managed to destroy two of my tap handle tools, and chucking it into the air impact wrench didn’t work. The bolt was fused into the aluminum case. There was no way it was coming out. And late afternoon on a Sunday, a correct size Helicoil kit could not be found at a convenient location. So much for dreams of driving the car today.  Oh well. That was being way optomistic anyway. We drill out the hole and tap it in preperation for a thread insert kit that I will have to buy later.

So the main event of the day, getting the engine and tranny assembly into the car.  Fabio being the most experienced of us, rides the tranny like the wild cowboy he is. We need to back out and make the crane extend longer, it was bottoming out and wasn’t allowing far enough insertion. That taken care of, Fabio expertly guides the tranny in. It sure feels good to have that done, the end is in sight.