Winter Break resulting in tranny problems

[joeymarkgraf]

Over the winter break from college, I decided to drive my newly acquired 1981 C-10 to my parents for a project over the break. It made it the 400 miles from Corvallis to Pendleton Oregon, which seemed like a piece of cake. The next day, my brother and myself jumped into the newly named "Blue Bomber" and headed off to town. After our first errand, I decided to throw the keys to my brother and let him drive. We hopped in and he turned the key. Bang! Bang! Bang! and the pickup didn't quite turn over strongly. He looked at me with a sour look on his face and said that my starter was going tits up. I agreed, and he tried again and it started. So we picked up a new starter and went home and installed it. The next day, we decided to visit a friend, and took off. The pickup started fine, and we drove over to meet my buddy. We got there, and he wanted to hear my newly acquired hot rod. So I jumped in and.... You guessed it. Bang bang bang.

So we took it to his shop and took the flexplate cover off. We found that the one of the three flexplate bolts was missing, and the other two had egged out the flexplate, moving about a quarter of an inch. {See pic below} We decided to pull the tranny, as we had the whole break to do it. So, four hours and a few busted knuckles later, we had it off and took a look at what we had. One of the studs on the torque converter was bent, and the threads on the other were completely shot. We took off and ordered a new flexplate, torque converter and rubber tranny mount. Two days later, the parts came in, and we had our work cut out for us.

We got the tranny back on in about an hour and a half, much better than I had expected as we all hadn't ever pulled a rwd tranny before. We began to torque the flexplate bolts to the torque converter starting out at 20 ft/lbls. One went in, two went in, then on the third and last bolt of the project, the torque wrench slid around WAY too easy, resulting in a stripped torque converter stud. I was slightly unhappy to say the least.

So we took the tranny off again, to take the torque converter back to the store and see if they would agree that the threads had to be defective. BTW, it only took 45 minutes to get the tranny off! Once we got it off, I had noticed that the bolts the parts guy gave us seemed to be short, so I took them with me. After a talk with the parts manager, he cleaned up the threads with a tap and gave me longer bolts to try.

I took them home and reassembled. On the second flexplate bolt, the flexplate slipped and I almost thought I had stripped it out again. After a short cursing session, I returned to torquing it down, and finally finished it up.

Then, about three days later, everything seemed fine until my th350 tranny wouldn't come out of first gear. I pulled over, slid it over to first, then park, then first again, then it would go in. A few minutes later, it stuck in first again, and I could get it to shift by pulling over from drive to first, then back to drive again.

Being a college student, I don't really have the cash to buy a rebuilt tranny. I saw an ad for Shucks where they advertised a rebuilt th350 for $399, which may be an option, but doesn't seem like a great idea. Is it really impossibly hard to rebuild a tranny? I have very little experience with these rigs, but I'm fairly mechanical, so that may be an option if I can find a good manual.

Any suggestions to what the problem or solution may be?

Thanks!