I DID THE UNFORGETABLE

[Guest audiosportconcepts]

Well, i did it, i wasn't fun, but i did it. I changed out my automatic tranny with another one, and it was the biggest pain. It took 9.5 hours to just get it out, about 4 hours of prep work in the middle, then 8.5 hours to reinstall it. The biggest pain was the torque converter. You can take the tranny out with the torque converter still bolted onto the fly wheel. but to reinstall it, you have to put it into the tranny, so that the slots on the TQ line up with the pump on the tranny. Now for the tricky part, the only way to get to the bolts are through the starter hole and you DON'T HAVE MUCH ROOM! If you drop a bolt taking it out , it's not a big deal, BUT when you put it back in, be darn careful not to drop it, or you'll be searching around in the bell housing for hours trying to find that darn bolt. I had two bolts in, and was working on the third, when it happened, I dropped the bolt. I obviously wasn't going to take them all back out and spread the tranny and engine again, because it's not like it was easy to line them up in the first place. So the best advice i can give, is to stuff a rag in the bottom of the starter hole, so that if you do drop a bolt it hopefully won't fall all the way down. Everything is very very tight under there. And the other snag i ran into was the torsion bars, they WON'T come out unless you back the adjusting bolts ALL the way out, I took me a while to figure that one out too. I guess overall if I had to do it again, I WOULDN'T, I would give it away before i do that again, The only reason why I changed it in the first place was becasue i love my pathy and i got the tranny for $200. If any one has any questions, just post em. I hope I didn't discourage anyone. HAHA It's enough to make you go nuckin' futz

[Precise1]

LOL, I have an idea of what you mean, but you had it worse... I put a clutch in mine, and it was a long chore. Not particularly hard (other than the tranny/transfer case unit being about 1/2 the size of the truck) but labor intensive. As for the T-bars, with a MT you have to drop the cross member anyway and the T-bars don't want to come loose until you loosen the bolts for the front spline bracket, then they fall out LOL. Can't imagine trying to work through the starter hole !!! Yow, nice design !! Good job and hats off !!

 

Bernard

[lgranch]

Pull the motor and the tranny comes out leaving the T bar in place. I think the system of pulling the transfer case then the tranny next time. There will be a next time because I am looking for a donor pathy with a good frame and body. I am finding dozens with blown trannys in the NJ area. It is a bit far for me to go, but I still may do it.