Legends of the Engine Compartment

Part 18

October 15, 2002

We are getting close now.

First order of business last night was to pull out the dipstick tube and put it in the right way. That's better! Put the oil back in, and guess what? the dipstick works as advertised. What will they think of next?!

Next, we painted the muffler hangars and put them back on, which would have been much easier to do before I put all the shrouding back on, but still it wasn't that big a deal.

Next we took the motor off the engine stand and set it on the cart I bought from Clarks for just this purpose, supporting the front of the motor with wooden blocks for now.

We then removed the engine stand yoke, removed the pressure plate, checked the torque on the flywheel bolts, put the clutch back in, and reinstalled the pressure plate.

Here she sits on the dolly:

Once we were satisfied with the condition of the clutch, we carried the transaxle over and started lining it up with the motor. I turned the crank until the input shaft seated, and motor and trans were reunited. We got it all bolted up and then reinstalled the axle dipstick tube.

Now came time to refill the diff and transmission with gear oil. I bought Amsoil Series 2000 75W-90 lube, which comes in a pretty blue color. We cleaned the old gasket off the top cover of the diff, filled it to the bottom of the fill plug hole, and bolted the cover back on, piecing together the remains of the old gasket. O.k., I was just kidding. We used a new gasket. Then off came the transmission side cover for the gasket cleaning and replacement. That done, we put the blue stuff in there, too.

We hooked up the accelerator rod and linkage and then I got the starter. At this point the powertrain started tipping aft on the dolly. We braced it with a jack, got the starter attached and the wires properly routed, and then scratched our heads in puzzlement. It didn't tip when we took it out, so why is it tipping now? We ruled out a higher specific gravity for the gear lube in favor of the exhaust system not yet being attached. So we grabbed the mufflers and some donuts only to find that all of the exhaust packings I have are the WRONG SIZE. Too small. It was 1:00 a.m., so we called it a night and I determined to scour the Lansing area for exhaust packings in the morning. As of this writing, I have located one.

Here are a couple of the pictures of the powertrain sans exhaust.

 

I am hoping to post pictures of the powertrain in the car tomorrow.

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On to Part 19.

All images and text copyright Norman C. Witte 2002.