Restoring Rusty

[Gregski]

and here i am giving you the shaft

[Gregski]

and here are all the bits that make up the main shaft from left to right or rear to the front of the vehicle

note the one shinny new synchro, getting lined up in parallel for replacement

[Gregski]

next it was time to clean the old gasket residue off of the case

[Gregski]

it's wire wheelin' time

[Gregski]

goodness, how many sides does this thing have

[Gregski]

the tail housing also got some love

[Gregski]

and pretty soon I had transferred all the old gasket material on to my ol' favorite shirt

Clean Up Fun Level = 0

[Gregski]

just some random pics of all four new syncros, showing they all be the same

[RDrancher]

Well you sure ain't no quitter.

[MikeB]

Originally Posted by RDrancher

Well you sure ain't no quitter.

I'll second that!

Have a friend who just finished going through a cast iron 70s Mopar 4-speed, which is based on a 3-speed. That means 3rd gear is 1:1 and 4th is an overdrive gear where third would normally be on the countershaft and mainshaft. And like you, he had never done one before, but just dug in and got 'er done!

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by MikeB

I'll second that!

Have a friend who just finished going through a cast iron 70s Mopar 4-speed, which is based on a 3-speed. That means 3rd gear is 1:1 and 4th is an overdrive gear where third would normally be on the countershaft and mainshaft. And like you, he had never done one before, but just dug in and got 'er done!

Cool, good for him, this may be embarrassing for me to admit but only after taking it apart and attempting to upload the photos to this forum did I finally conceptualize how the hewk those transmission guts work, I would stare at pictures in a book or on the InterWebs and it was as if I was trying to learn how to swim by reading about it, know what I mean, so if nothing else I learned something from doing things hands on

[MikeB]

Originally Posted by Gregski

Cool, good for him, this may be embarrassing for me to admit but only after taking it apart and attempting to upload the photos to this forum did I finally conceptualize how the hewk those transmission guts work, I would stare at pictures in a book or on the InterWebs and it was as if I was trying to learn how to swim by reading about it, know what I mean, so if nothing else I learned something from doing things hands on

My friend relied heavily on the advice and support of Mopar trans parts specialist somewhere in the Northeast. Hey, this stuff is a team sport!

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by RDrancher

Well you sure ain't no quitter.

thank you it's that small town farm boy tenacity, I remember one time my dad and I were wrenching in a carport of our 2 bedroom apartment, we were having a tough time with something, and I wanted to quit, and he said "and what are we going to do, cry about it?" and that was that, a boy became a man, ha ha

[rusty76]

Well done. If one thing racing taught me over the years is that just because you haven’t done it or seen it doesn’t mean you can’t do it.

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by rusty76

Well done. If one thing racing taught me over the years is that just because you haven’t done it or seen it doesn’t mean you can’t do it.

ah nice to hear from one of The Usual Suspects, aint that the truth Keyser!

[Gregski]

well before I realized the detent ball was missing I already removed the counter shaft so might as well walk you through it

I gotta be honest I was pretty intimidated about pressing this shaft out, but it turned out to be super easy and all I needed was a hammer

the first two pics show a good view of the idler gear and how it slides side to side - this may be the smoking gun

[Gregski]

here I show you that the counter shaft is keyed or at least has a thingie thingie that prevents it from spinning or at least from getting pressed in too far

[Gregski]

and here is the counter shaft gear cluster and it's 54 roller bearings, 27 in the front and 27 in the rear

note the missing washer on the left, the top row is the used washers/spacers the bottom are the new replacement ones - I did install one from the rebuild kit when I reassembled it and it fit great no drag or nothing

[Gregski]

I put all 54 used counter shaft roller needle bearings into a zip loc bag so that I wouldn't mix them up with the brand new ones

looks like they give you 1 extra one in the rebuild kit so make sure you count them out ahead of time

[Gregski]

after wiping the cluster gear clean and dry you need some sort of grease to keep the roller bearings put, I'm sure this ain't the "right" kind, but we are using such a small dab of it that it really don't matter, plus I promised my dad I would use up all this grease we bought 35 years ago before I die, ha ha

[Gregski]

not sure you can tell in this pic but the counter shaft had some slight scaring on it, if I had a replacement one I would have swapped it out, but I didn't so I smoothed it out the best I could with some super fine sand paper and back in it went, Roadkill style

[Gregski]

so after spending $40 bucks at Napa on the wrong type of snap ring pliers, I went to O'Reilly's and spent $15 on the right ones, these they call Lock Ring Pliers learn and live people, learn and live

[Gregski]

and with that the reassembly got under way... as they say in your favorite Hayne's or Chilton's manual "Installation is the opposite of removal"

[Gregski]

speedo gear went back on

[Gregski]

gooped the input shaft and shoved the 14 new bearings in from the rebuild kit