Getting Into Gear

A  short week after the Easter break meant that my weekend trip to Mustang Maniac arrived in no time. I was sure to take my ball bearing down with me to fit into the fully exposed C4 gearbox. The weather started of bad but was promising to be a nice day. I arrived at the office to see Adam in the office with a room full of people, a couple of faces I recognised and a number I didn’t. Is this the male equivalent of the ladies coffee mornings, a load of blokes all standing around talking cars? Eventually I tore myself away to get down to the task in hand, finishing the gearbox. Last week the missing ball bearing stopped play unfortunately so hopefully we could make some time back up.

I pulled out the box of bits I had taken down and carefully removed the bearing and spring to check for size.

In order to wedge the bearing in place I dropped the bearing onto a slim screwdriver and lowered it into place and made sure there was clearance with no binding at all as this needed to release pressure. Once I was happy I let the bearing go and rest in place. Now I was well chuffed.

Next up was the gasket for the filter and fitting the spring into the pressure release, The filter was fitted to the correct position ensuring the spring was in place and not ping out.

The next part was the gearbox sump pan. The old pan was a little dented but could of been cleaned up and reused with a new gasket. Adam suggested a newer design drained sump, no it was not concourse, and as I was a slight resto-mod anyway I was swayed with the super shiny chrome. The gasket was laid on the gearbox and pan fitted in place ready to tighten the bolts up.

The last part that had to go onto the gearbox was the new engine mount. This wasn’t able to be done up tight to start with as the gearbox needed to be in position first. That meant due to where the bolt heads are the mounting bracket would have to be fitted then removed to tighten the bolts fully.

At this point Adam joined me to help with the gearbox fitting, we decided to dry a fit to make sure everything was in place and where it should be. It was going to take longer with bits going on and coming off again, but as we have seen some of the previous handy work we wanted to make sure. I fitted the flex plate and the retaining plate first, not doing things up to tight, just to make sure it was held in place. Then we jacked the gearbox to the engine to check alignment.

Adam was happy with the fit and gave me the next set of instructions. Remove the flex plate again, clean up the torque converter, spray the engine back plate and then give him a shout. As the sun was out and a gorgeous day the spraying was dry by the time I had cleaned up the converter. The torque converter was cleaned up on the outside being careful not to get any cleaner into the converter itself.

With the converter now cleaned I took that and the plate back to the workshop. Fitting the newly sprayed engine plate to the back of the engine was simple as it was more like a huge gasket. The flex plate was remounted and bolts done up tight.

The torque converter was fitted into the bell housing and checked all was aligned correctly.

The gearbox was lifted to the engine and the gearbox was held in place while, the torque converter was aligned up to the flex plate with a single bolt to hold it in place from slipping out of position. The bell housing bolts were fitted to the engine and tightened up with Adam’s new fancy Snap On tool. Note to self – future Christmas prezzie!

Next up was the gearbox support bracket that we dry fitted earlier. The gearbox mounting bracket was now in place and tight so we just had to tighten the nuts to the bolt threads. Now the gearbox was supported under her own weight and the lift was released.

A huge step forward and we were on a roll. We decided to fit the prop shaft in place while we were at it. Adam carefully inspected the UJ bearings to make sure that there were no needle bearings missing. Once he was happy with that they were fitted to the end of the prop shaft universal joint and clamped into place.

The drive train was now in place. Technically ready to move under her own power and drive.

To finish the day we day we quickly fitted up the hand brake counter lever to keep the cables of the floor.

Next week it shall be back to putting things back in the engine bay. I hope to fit my new engine headers and the radiator. I am so looking forward to that.

Adam showed me a quick peak at the interior I wanted and it looks pretty darn good, but I would say that as it’s mine. I will have to start working on striping the seats down ready for the fitters sooner rather than later.

A great day, thanks Adam.