ThaBigPerm

Well, I have a torque converter that (eventually) needs replacing. Symptoms to narrow it down to TC (as opposed to pump or AT internals): Whining noise when engine is loading transmission (either going down the road with foot on gas, or stopped in a forward or reverse gear). Whining goes away in P or N. Revving the engine in P or N does not produce the whine. Whining goes away when TC goes into lockup, even with loading (whine comes right back when TC jumps out of lockup). Whine also is not linear with engine speed or trans input speed - the whine actually follows the difference between engine speed and trans input speed - whine pitch increases up to stall speed (~2100rpm diff) and hangs out there no matter engine RPM if accelerating/loading. My whine also has a "cavitating" sound quality to it, but my understanding is that the bearings (stator?) are shot ... or nearly so.

Depends on the engine. Not sure if a VG30 is internally or externally balanced, but old-school small block Fords and Chevys are externally balanced, using weighted flywheel and harmonic balancer to balance the engine. A giveaway that an engine is externally balanced is if the harmonic balancer has unilateral "lobes" of extra material, or material is drilled/milled out favoring one side or the other. A few examples of what you'd see:

Maybe not related, but it's worth throwing out there in case someone else encounters the problem. Many moons ago a customer came into the shop I worked at complaining that their car stumbled horribly when driving around. Step on the gas, stumble stumble - but ran absolutely fine when parked in P or N. Put the car in gear and try to rev the engine with the brakes on, stumble cough stumble as well. Back in P or N, ran fine. :0/ Electrical diagnostics turned up nothing. After deciding on pulling/cleaning the MAF sensor as a Hail Mary, the tech found a hidden (underneath, between the little accordian groves) but significant crack in the rubber MAF->throttle body air tube. What was happening is that the crack self-sealed (mostly) when the engine wasn't under load, hence it ran fine. When the engine torqued (driving or in gear with the brakes on) it opened up this crack, creating a massive vacuum leak downstream of the MAF sensor (effectively bypassing it - no bueno).

When I did my timing belt on my A/T Pathy, I used the alternator belt (the longest one) to hold the pully. The way I did it was strap it around the 2nd pully grove (one of the largest diameter ones) with the excess facing down and towards the driver's side. I got underneath, stuck a spare breaker bar through the belt and began winding it up, making sure the belt stayed in the groove (it would sometimes try to pop out). After 6 or so full twists it was pretty tight, and I was able to wedge the breaker bar between the LCA (I think) bracket and a bumper bracket perfectly. Sure enough, it held it tight enough to break the bolt loose as well as torque it back down when I was done. Of course I bought a replacement belt, since I'm sure this one is now a few inches longer lol. But I do keep it with my tools as a strap wrench if I need it again (which I eventually did). And yes, I did have a 2nd breaker bar handy to actually break the bolt loose while the other one was serving strap wrench duty, which helped.

^Amendment: when shrink-tubing, make sure to shrink tube the center conducter/solder point independent of the shield, so you don't have a short.

There is an alternative so you can use the factory amps, which worked on my 2000 Mustang GT like Slick Rick until I scratched up enough to replace the factory amps (and the factory amps weren't that bad on my 'Stang). I intend to do the same trick for my dual amp '93 pathy until I can do the whole shabang. The trick is, assuming you have dual front/rear RCA out on your new head unit to match the front/rear input setup on the factory wiring harness, is to get a dual RCA patch cable and cut it in half so you have two dual RCA cables terminating at the cut (you can probably see where I'm going with this already...). Instead of splicing the amplified outputs from the head unit into the harness adapter's inputs, strip back the insulation on the RCAs and solder those in instead to feed a line-level to the amp's inputs. Shield would go to "-", center conductor goes to "+", etc. Shrink tube it up and voila! Line level fed to the amp's inputs! And no cutting of the factory harness needed (you only need to jack with the little adapter pigtail that plugs into the factory harness). They do make those tunable resistors that go in-line to drop amplified signals to line-level, which was the first trick I used on the 'Stang. It melted from the heat, so I've since considered them a poor hack and fire hazard.

+1. I just had the (dis)pleasure of going out to my Pathy after several days of sitting to discover the battery was dead. Not "click click click" when I tried to start it, I mean stone cold dead. And she has a new battery and alternator already. So, after jumping her and discovering I'd not left the dome lights on as I had hoped, I worried I had a mystery short somewhere. Until I walked 'round the back while she was idling and saw the brake lights on. On the floor mat on the driver's side were crumbled plastic pieces ... inspect under the brake pedal and of course - those little plastic buttons had disintegrated. Quick trip to Home Depot, grabbed a pair of 5/16" bolts, 3/4" long, a pair of flat washers, lock washers and nuts. It's all working again.