Clutch bolts and locktite

Hi Clare, I didn't think of that!

Thanks for all your help, as you are helping me UNDERSTAND what I'm doing!

Anyway, yet again, your answer came too late, but it's good to know as I would have asked why on earth people said to put the transmission in the high (fifth) gear, since that's the *only* step where it's needed (any gear works fine for the rest of the transmission job).

I tried to use pliers on the shaft on the back of the transmission but there's absolutely zero chance you'll spin it that way.

What I ended up doing was loosening the straps on the transmission jack and then putting my head way back at the differential, and my feet on the back of the transmission and I jiggled the transmission like it was a bowl of jello.

When I went forward to look at the effect, voila, the bolts were lined up and slid onto my two 17mm diameter threaded 3-inch dowels (which were a Godsend, where I'm super happy that I machined them!).

I didn't use any loctite because I want to put all the bolts in first, and then snug them up, and then remove one by one, to loctite blue when I'm actually ready to torque them.

At this point, I don't have any questions as I'm just at the stage of putting back the myriad bolts and sensors and fluid.

I have two now-old questions that I would love more detail on, both of which are about "alignment" of the transmission shaft.

  1. When I put on the clutch plate and diaphragm, I stuck the plastic alignment tool in and then pulled it out when I was ready to put in the transmission. What did I do by sticking that plastic tool in? I didn't notice anything happening whatsoever. If I didn't use the alignment tool, what would have happened? (I don't get what tool did.)

  1. When I got stuck in the last inch or two on the transmission, I didn't know why it wouldn't go that last inch. I thought of what it could be and the most likely was that I was off center with the flywheel but it could also have been maybe that the splines weren't lined up? If the splines weren't lined up, would that stop the clutch from going in, or, would they just line themselves up while I jiggled (something in that jiggling worked, but what)?

I must repeat that neither of those two questions is critical because I'm past that stage, but I'm curious about what exactly is aligned by the plastic tool, and whether the splines in the end will line up on their own with just jiggling or if the drive shaft is needed.

If the drive shaft is needed, it must only twist a teeny tiny amount, because how much twisting could it take to align those splines (1/16th inch?).

Pictures later.... got to get back to the job before nightfall.

Thanks for all your help, as you are helping me UNDERSTAND what I'm doing!

Reply to
Arlen Holder
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If the clutch plate was aligned with the pilot bushing when you bolted down the pressure plate you would know what the tool was for. How would you align it without the tool?

Reply to
rbowman

SOLVED!

It's done. I am gonna take it for a smoke test.

The new tools I'm glad I obtained were the transmission jack (thank God), and the alignment tool that came with the clutch kit, and the assortment of extension bars, and the two M12x1.25 3-inch threaded dowels.

In the end, I removed more than is necessary, but I'm glad I did remove the front wheels (particularly the driver side), the front sway bar, the entire harness (every bolt and every sensor), and the cross member.

The bitch was the starter motor, both getting out and even worse getting back in, which is the only job that really required two people. I did everything else alone. The second hardest task was lining up the transmission to go in because you're staring at a hunk of aluminum not knowing why it won't move forward.

The top two 17mm bell housing bolts were not easy, but not all that difficult with 30 inches of extensions and swivels.

Pouring the new Redline MT-90 into the conning tower turns out to be the

*easiest* way to refill a transmission, bar none.

Having four 15-inch jack stands was instrumental, as I needed at least 23 inches of clearance from the frame to get the transmission in and out.

The actual transmission work was easy, including the diaphragm, the pilot bearing, the throwout bearing, and the fork, but I would have liked thicker grease on the fork (but I only had Mobil 1 bearing grease).

I wrote up a detailed DIY so that others could benefit from all the work, and I took hundreds of pictures. I don't know if I'll ever associate the pictures with each task, but I'll try to help others.

Thanks for all your advice and help. If there is a bedding procedure, now is the time to let me know! Pictures later.

I very much appreciate you help, because it's my first clutch job ever and I have nobody around me who knows anything about cars - so your advice was instrumental!

Reply to
Arlen Holder

Break it in just like you would do with new brake shoes or pads. Easy for a while before you lean hard on it.

Reply to
Hank Rogers

Thanks for that advice. I took it on a flat road and up a hill but not yet on the highway as it's kind of far so I'll let the driver do that.

I did stall it a couple of times when I was doing a first and reverse K turn, which is strange but that's because it used to grab almost at the top of the clutch pedal return, and even then, it had grabbed smoothly (since it was super worn).

Now it grabs much earlier and very firmly on the pedal uplift. Much earlier than it did before. But that old clutch had something like 90K miles on it, and about 10 years of driving, so a difference in feel is to be expected.

It's a self-adjusting (so to speak, but really that just means it's hydraulic) so there's nothing to adjust but pedal play to the master cylinder.

I'll deal with that adjustment later, as I've done it before and it's really not a hard science it seems, as there's nothing but a bit of free play to measure (you can't really measure it ... you just feel for it).

BTW, it's a stock 1:1 replacement for the 900 foot pound original clutch, where the Marlin Crawler outfit sells a 1200 pound clutch that they 'say' is better but I can't imagine what more foot pounds will do for a clutch since the engine only develops something like 250 foot pounds (which may not be the same type since one is angular and the other maybe not).

Anyway, everything is working - where I appreciate the help because it was my first clutch, which took more than twice as long as I had thought it would take and where, with your help, I did everything alone except for the starter motor replacement - where a friend helped me.

It feels good to finally know what a pilot bearing is, and where it goes, and how it goes in, and how it comes out. Likewise with the throwout bearing.

I did test Clare's suggestion on the old clutch plate and diaphragm where I can see now that gravity will pull it down off center which will then be bolted off center if I don't use the alignment tool. With the alignment tool, there was no alignment problem (other than having to jiggle the bejesus out of the transmission to get the splines to line up).

Another thing Clare and others suggested was to spin the transmission through the driveshaft, which turned out to be very easy when I tried it.

Overall, I'm glad I did it, as there are some jobs that are too big to do at home, where lots of people consider this one of them. I feel like I graduated, a bit, into an elite group, who has done a clutch at least once.

Reply to
Arlen Holder

I've done it without a jack when I was young and poor. Then I found you could rent them from most rental places. I saw the light right after I pulled the cast iron 4 speed primitive automatic from a '49 Chrysler. I got it our without crushing any vital body parts but I knew it wasn't going back in that way.

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Yeah, I know that's for a John Deere but it was the first link with a photo I came to. Trust me, that's not even the weirdest starter motor wrench I've seen. I'm sure when they're bolting the assembly together on the production line it's a piece of cake but then they grease it up and shove it into the body.

Reply to
rbowman

Reading between the lines he is not the principal driver. Maybe take it for a long, gentle road trip before handing it over...

Or there is the other school of break-in -- drive it like you stole it.

Reply to
rbowman

I have heard of that, and, truth be told, this transmission was light enough for me to move around in my hands, but, I'd *never* do the job without that transmission jack. Too much chance of getting tired and getting hurt if it doesn't go in or out on schedule.

I admire anyone who has removed a transmission without a jack!

Cast iron. OMG. This one is aluminum, thank God. And 2WD. And I had taken all the fluid out. So it was a light as it was going to get, and still, I wouldn't do that job without a transmission jack.

I don't like the jack I got, but it did the job. It could adjust side to side and up and down, but not much on the down because the handle hit the bottom of the transmission (poor design). I had to bolt on a piece of 3/4 inch scrap to raise the transmission away from the knob.

Something like that wrench might have worked. I tried every 14mm tool in my repertoire, and finally I got it. There's no way I was gonna get a torque wrench on it though, so, at 30 pounds, I just guessed.

The problem was that the two bolts were blocked by almost everything no matte rwhat direction you came at them.

If you tried from above, you could barely put a fingertip on the upper bolt. If you tried from the wheel well, you could get only one hand. And if you tried from below, you couldn't see what you're doing.

It was horrid. But that part is over thank God.

Really - the hardest part, in hindsight, other than not knowing what to do, was that starter motor. I'm glad it's over with. (It's my first starter motor too.)

If I do it again, I'd pick up all the shapes of 14mm wrenches that God has designed, hoping that one of them would be the perfect shape!

Reply to
Arlen Holder

The 3 and 4 speed transmissions with aluminum housings don't weigh that much. Particularly when you're twenty.

The Chrysler otoh was a piece of work. It was very early in the development of automatics so it had both a clutch and a fluid coupling.

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The moment of truth was when I took the whole weight and realized I might be going for a personal best bench press.

The rest of the car followed suit. It was a straight 8, cast iron block of course. No power steering. It was pleasant on the highway but my wife used words I didn't think she knew trying to parallel park the beast.

They don't make cars like that anymore. Thank the Gods. At about 4500 pounds 0 to 60 took a while. My '62 Continental weighed in over 5000 pounds but it had a modern 430 ci V-8 and was a supercar compared to a flat head straight 8 that was designed in the early '30s.

Reply to
rbowman

Thanks again for all your help. I am happy to have finally, after many decades of being afraid of doing a transmission, gotten my "boy scout badge" for doing one.

It's probably my first and last transmission ever, but I have already forgotten about the "thousand situps" I did, in effect, by getting up and down to get tools and parts over the past five days.

I'm told sometimes even transmission shops take as long (elapsed time) as I did to replace a clutch, although I would think, in actual shop hours, the job would be less than six or seven hours (I'm guessing though).

It took me longer because I documented every single step down to the detail of the thread pitch, and I took many pictures, and I cleaned up the parts, and I had to learn each time how to do the steps I had never done (like aligning the transmission splines).

Most of the time the answers came too late, as I had figured them out by then, but it's very nice to know that the solution I came up with (except on torque) was the right one in the end.

I don't know what I'll do with that transmission jack. It will probably take up space in my garage forever though. :)

Reply to
Arlen Holder

She drove it today on the highway and said it didn't vibrate, which is good because I had mounted and balanced her tires and replaced her rear drums where I made a rookie mistake by not putting the drum linkages back right.

This time, I rotated the tires again (she eats them up where I wish there was a way to cash in on the warranty since the car is aligned professionally and the tires are rotated five times a year in the X and then H pattern repeatedly (X then H then X then H, etc.).

I wonder if there is a way to "prove" you rotated tires when you do them at home? I never cashed in on a tire warranty in my life so I don't know how it works (do you ship them back the four tires, for example?).

I learned a lot I hadn't expected to learn, by the way, such as this is what the reverse sensor looks like apparently:

And this is apparently the speedometer sensor:

And that the clutch disc is asymmetric so it has to go in only this way:

Filling the transmission with the Red Line MT-90 was a breeze from the top:

But I wonder what this strange-looking "K" means on the conning tower?

Reply to
Arlen Holder

Thanks for that information on the 3 hours as this is a RWD, and a 2WD which has as much room as you can every have on a passenger vehicle.

So, I suspect, the job doesn't get any easier than the one I did, since there is no 4WD to deal with and the amount of room is astronomical compared to, oh, say, a typical sports sedan.

I didn't count the hours it took me, but if I count four hours each day of actual work, that's 6x4=24 hours, which is, for me, acceptable because I spent a lot of time learning, cleaning, experimenting, making tools, modifying the jack, swearing, and cursing, and, drinking copious amounts of lemonade kindly brought to me every few hours by the grandchildren (who felt sorry for me but who didn't know I was in heaven as I finally, after decades of being scared, did my first transmission).

The kid whose car it is came over today to pick it up, and she tested it on the highway, and it worked fine she said (I only tested it locally).

It has 180K miles, where it's definitely only the second clutch as the vehicle has been in the family since it was born. So a clutch on this vehicle lasts about 90K miles, on average, since the last one was slipping also when it was replaced (by a mechanic).

Total cost to me was something around $250 for tools and another $250 for parts, so it's an approximately $500 gift to the kid who works as a secretary so she doesn't have a lot of money.

I never could have had the confidence if I didn't know you would help, so I'm extremely glad for your patience on my rookie questions. I didn't even realize that the alignment tool did, for example, until *after* I had the transmission in. And I didn't understand why people said to put it in high gear since I didn't need to touch the gears at any point in time, so I only figured that one out after I had trouble getting it back in.

Things like that slowed me down, where, if I had formal education in auto mechanics, I would have known a LOT more before I did the job. As it is, the job taxed my tools to the utmost limit, where I was so happy that I had dozens of assorted half inch and three-eighths inch extensions and swivels and sockets and wrenches.

In fact, I think this is the first time in my life that I *required* half-inch tools, since up until now, the 3/8ths inch extensions didn't twist more than the torque required. But I never had to use 30 inches of extension before either - which is what is required for the top two bolts on the transmission hump.

Note in the DIY: Removing the conning tower seems like it would have made a HUGE improvement in easy of removal!

Wow. 4 hours. Jesus. I didn't even have all the tools assembled, made and modified in four hours!

I see you accidentally did what I did which is to knock the release bearing (aka throwout bearing) off, where any tug on the fork caused the TOB to fall off the splined transmission shaft until I rubber-banded it in place.

I didn't remove that rubber band until I put the slave cylinder back! (NOTE: I recently rebuilt the clutch master cylinder and clutch slave cylinder and replaced the two rubbery plastic bushings in the shift lever, so, except for the actual transmission itself, the entire shifting system is all new in the last year.)

I did buy too many jacks though - as now I have an ATV jack in addition to my transmission jack to store for the rest of my life! (I've already offered my neighbors the right to borrow them since "they" have ATVs, but I don't.)

Yuck. You never forget those jobs! (I envy you for all your experience!)

It's commendable, with the reassembly you did, that you met flat rate.

Luckily, my wife and kids left me alone, which is all well and good as they would have been standing over me like your foreman was, just slowing me down even further.

Wow. That's something you just have to trace to find since you wouldn't expect a screw in a wiring harness normally. You work backward or forward, usually backward, until the power or continuity is shot, and that tells you where the problem is ... if ... if you can get to it. (A wiring harness can be anywhere though.)

Hehhehheh...

Wow. You figured it out just on the problem set presented to you.

I do ask a lot of questions ... but ... on the good side ... you have to admit that I think for myself (I don't think what everyone else thinks for example, in that I think about octane, and I think about how to diagnose as I never throw parts at a problem unless I'm backed up against the wall, and I always look at the parts to figure out how they work and I often take them apart for an autopsy to see how they failed.

I should note to you that I'm extremely well educated but not in this stuff. I have multiple degrees, but in fields completely different than car or home repair. So I'm very used to asking questions, and I'm extremely used to what people "think" is the answer intuitively, often (and sometimes almost always, at least in the case of quantum mechanics) is dead wrong.

So, for example, people "think" you can't balance tires at home ... but you can. And they think you can't mount them at home - but you can. And they think you can't measure alignment at home, but you can (I still need to prove that though).

Another thing about me, Clare, that is extremely different than most people, is that I CARE about being a good Usenet citizen, even as I value my privacy. So I always *respond* to most people in any thread I author, which some people consider trolling, which is ridiculous since I'm simply being responsive.

I almost always prove what I say I'm doing with photos. And I almost always write up a DIY to give back to the team.

I almost always summarize the results in the end, and I thank the people for helping me (where, I often condemn those who don't like the few who posted early on in this thread, such as Wade Garrett who has been stalking me from the iOS threads) but in this case, I had too much on my hands to even bother to tell those useless posters to shut up.

I'm DIFFERENT than almost everyone you've ever met.

How many, for example, write a detailed DIY every time they do a big job?

Other than my privacy fetish (which drives some of you nuts I think even though I never hide who I am so anyone who claims to figure it out isn't the genius they think they are simply because it's trivial to do), I'm one of the best Usenet posters there is because I ask a question and prove everything I say, and try out every reasonable suggestion (if possible) and I respond to everyone in the same manner in which they responded to me.

I'm only on Usenet to ask questions and to learn from people who have the answers. I'm not here for idle chitchat, so I disappear until I have another question.

I love to learn from you, and I will eventually do the six jobs few do at home but you've done most of them.

  1. Refuel a vehicle (I do it every week where I have it down to a science)
  2. Mount, balance, & repair tires (I'm well past the tool break-even point)
  3. Major transmission work (a clutch counts since R&R is the hard part)
  4. Major internal engine work (I've never ripped an engine apart yet)
  5. Paint a car (a grandchild has a handmedown I'd love to paint for her)
  6. Align caster, camber & toe (this will be my next project for sure)

I think each of those things above has a DIFFERENT reason people don't do them, where you have to admit at the very least, even if you disagree with me, that I think for myself, so I don't follow what most people assume (and which in some cases I've found to be dead wrong).

For example, refueling a vehicle is trivial, safe, and easy, and I've been doing that for a decade or more at home (where if I ever get some money, I'll buy even better gas-station equipment, which is surprisingly inexpensive but where the limiting factor isn't the equipment but that they don't deliver less than 200 gallons at a time in general).

Also, despite what most people think, and yes, I know you have TONS of experience mounting and dynamically balancing a tire and you wouldn't do it at home, I can mount and balance a sedan tire in fifteen minutes (and you know that I don't make shit up), where in general, I take longer (because I'm not in a rush) but it's never longer than a half hour elapsed time where once you taught me about the "drop center", all was golden from there (after I had to modify both the tire bead breaker and the tire mounting tool).

I think the reason people DON'T do these 6 things is... sort of...

  1. Fueling --- they don't have the room (I have more than a dozen acres)
  2. Mounting --- they "think" it has to be dynamically balanced
  3. Transmission --- it's a *lot* of work (whew!) but mostly just bolts
  4. Engine --- it's even *more* work (where nobody can afford the downtime)
  5. Paint --- you need skills and experience more than the tools
  6. Align --- they don't realize how easy toe & camber are to measure

I may be wrong on all of that, because I don't know how people really think, but you have to admit at least that I think for myself.

Take, for example, the mounting. I already know that mounting is *easy* on passenger cars, and that it's only a bit harder on truck (SUV) tires. Anyone who says it's not easy, or that you'll damage the rims (my Bimmer rims are as soft as most alloy wheels and they're just fine) is talking out of their ass - because I know - like you know - because I've done it about

25 times now (the tools paid for themselves in about 20 changes).

Anyone who thinks you can't patch plug from the inside doesn't know what they're talking about. And anyone who thinks you must dynamically balance every tire doesn't know what they're talking about (IMHO).

I had only one wobble in all this time, and that was due to doing the rear brake drum wrong (it was a rookie mistake - where I've had disc brakes on all my high end cars since the 80s until now that I do other people's cars to help them out. (I know you think that's a lawsuit waiting to happen, but I do the same on their cars as I would mine where I *know* (as you do) how many times mechanics skip steps.)

So, yes, I'm different. I'm intelligent. I can learn. I care about my privacy. I respond to almost everyone worth responding to. I usually confront the cowardly troll bullies in the threads I author I ask a question and work it until it's resolved I post a resolution and almost always write a DIY And then I disappear (until the next question).

The morons call that being a troll. I call it being a good Usenet citizen who cares about privacy and doesn't use the chitchat model (where in the chitchat model people post 99% to other threads saying almost nothing of value and only 1% to their own threads, where in the Q&A model, the opposite it true in every way).

I have tools from the 60s, and even some from the 40's, like this grease gun, where the grease must be thirty years or forty years old inside! :)

QUESTION: That was my dad's grease gun. How old do you think it is? (I don't know when he bought it as I inherited all his old tools.)

And these impact tools date to the mid 80's as I recall:

This Craftsman respirator I used when I was blowing out the bell housing and flywheel dust dates to the 80s for sure when I first attempted to paint a car (but ended up selling the car in the winter where if you've never lived in a cold climate - you have no idea how much harder everything is in the winter and when it rains a lot).

And without a cutting wheel and bench grinder, fabricating these two invaluable threaded dowels would not have been as easy as they were:

My next two jobs that you'll hear from me are: a. I want to paint a car, and, b. I want to align a suspension.

I think both of those two are doable, but I will do my research first and then, when I'm in the job itself, I may ask you for help to get past the stumbling blocks.

I don't expect a miracle with the paint job, but anything will look better than the handmedown paint that the kid has on the car now so I can't make it much worse. :)

As for the alignment, this vehicle only has camber and toe in the front that can be changed by twisting a bolt, so that's easy if I buy (or make) toe plates. The measuring is easy but changing the toe with the weight on the vehicle is a pain because of the rolling back and forth so I'll likely just buy toe plates first. Also alignment is a mental bitch because everything is in the wrong units. You measure inches, for example, but it's usually in degrees to centerline. WTF. That causes your brain to hurt as you use trig to figure out the translation.

At least camber is in degrees and you can measure degrees with today's tools, so, the problem with camber is only getting a jig that works on multiple vehicles since you have to offset the measuring tool parallel to the wheel but away from the tire sidewall bulge (sure, there are ways to do it with a plumb bob but I'd just go for the camber jig for ease of use).

Caster is usually too hard to measure directly, and for this car, it's not settable anyway. You can calculate it, but what good is the calculation when you can't set it.

In the rear, this vehicle only has camber and nothing else. So, when most people think "alignment" they're thinking a $100K machine which is optimized for a totally different use model than a guy checking his alignment at home where time and the ability to measure everything isn't the issue.

All you need is camber and toe for the most part, which means you need a camber jig and toe plates and as accurate an electronic level as you an afford.

Anyway, I'm DIFFERENT (which means we are different). You don't enjoy changing tires, I do. You think it's dangerous to not go to a mechanic, I think they skip steps. You may think I'm a troll but I'm not and I am DOING stuff when I ask things (I don't ask idly).

I should mention the only auto mechanics class I took was in high school in the sixties, where I was a star pupil and the teacher's pet simply because he never had anyone in his class so interested in the details. He once was amazed that I rewound a motorcycle alternator and horn solenoid in the same week, and that I kept asking questions about fluids, asking why the viscosity didn't really matter but the API number did, or what really needed distilled water (the battery) but not the coolant (in reality, once you look at water chemistry where we lived). I took sulfuric acid from the chem lab in high school (in those days, you didn't get expelled for breaking the rules) and refilled my own battery - it lasted about a month or two, as I recall).

I'm DIFFERENT than most people you've met - so I'm an acquired taste.

What I ask for, in this newsgroup, is the expertise of all the people here, most of which outweighs mine because I'm educated in totally different things.

HINT: Ask me about bacteria or electrical engineering and you'll get far more than you bargained for. :)

Reply to
Arlen Holder

You should record all this long saga to a dvd, and give it to your great grandchildren.

They will sit around campfires in 2060 and show the videos while roasting marshmallows.

Maybe in 2160, they will still recollect old gram pa's heroic efforts in the olden days.

Maybe a statue in the town square.

Reply to
Hank Rogers

They are widely different field, but I am interested in both, for two different reasons.

Do tell please. I welcome your expertise.

Reply to
Hank Rogers

What I really love to do, for posterity, is write tutorials. I just posted the nascent tutorial to one of your other posts. Take a look at it, and note two things: a. I don't skip a single step (not a single bolt) b. I have pictures of everything

What I'd *love* to do is rip apart an old car and write the "hanes" manual where I'd do so much better than does Chilton or the FSM that it wouldn't be funny.

Of course, my method works for a "specific" car, so that would be my angle. A specific model, year, and engine and transmission.

Do you think there would be a market for such a car-specific (completely unlike Hanes/Chilton/FSM) perfect no-step-missed DIY as I write?

Reply to
Arlen Holder

I completely understand. The "assumption" is that it's like a doctor's physical, of sorts.

It's more preventative medicine than corrective in that if your car has been in an accident, that's out of the scope of what I'm going to implement.

The assumption is the car has not been in an accident and it has been fully "aligned" at some point in the reasonable past where the history is known to you.

Under those circumstances, checking the things you can adjust is what I'm speaking about.

It's a philosophical thing, where if you have money to waste, go have a blast getting an alignment every month. But if you want to be pragmatic, then ensure the car is aligned properly, and then periodically check the caster, camber and toe, oh, say, every month or three.

It's a probability thing. Can the entropy be such that the entire frame will suddenly bend on you? Yup. There's a one in a trillion trillion trillion chance that this will happen. (this is how entropy works, by the way)

But we're talking normal probabilities here. Not accidents.

It's a *big* distinction.

Reply to
Arlen Holder

Nah, no market for it. The manufacturer has shop manuals for sale. I've had them for my last 4 cars. They can be costly, but I've managed to buy used ones on Ebay. I think the most expensive was about 45 bucks, but my cars were 10 years old when I bought them. But they can lead you down the wrong road. For instance, the procedure to replace the motor mounts on my '97 Lumina looked way too complicated and costly. I found a simple procedure on Youtube, and did it that way.

Reply to
Vic Smith

You didn't even get the requisite trip back to the parts store to get the right clutch and pressure plate. Ford was creative that year and you were never sure what you were going to find. Buy something and inevitably it was the wrong one.

I did manage to catch the carb rebuild kit before I got out the door at the parts store. I glanced at the box and it said Rochester. U-turn and a pointed question to the clerk "Are you sure about this, Sparky?" Even Ford wasn't that eclectic.

Reply to
rbowman

The problem is addressed on some forums. With digital cameras and the ease of putting stuff on line quite a few people have done step by step logs. Unfortunately they're model specific. The Toyota forum has saved me a lot of pain. I've got the manual but I'm sure the replace the radio page starts with 'remove dash trim'. Yeah, right. You start down at the transmission hump with a plastic putty knife popping off little plastic bits until you work your way up to the speedometer housing.

Bikes are getting just as bad. I had a driveway full of plastic pieces, a gas tank, and other odd and ends before I could get to the regulator to unplug the stator to replace it.

Some days I dream of finding a 1965 VW in good shape.

Reply to
rbowman

Yup. I've got the shop manuals for everything but the pickup. Some parts are good, some not so good. Then there are the five pages of specialized tools that you absolutely need which somehow I've never needed.

Reply to
rbowman

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