Daily Log for: May 06,
2002
Well, we took a big step backwards this weekend. My wife and I decided
to take the car out for a drive and put some gas in it. Everything
was going great...the motor was running smooth, the ride was great, and the
weather cooperated by providing a beautiful day. But, as I was slowing
down to turn onto our street, I downshifted into 3rd gear, and as I let the
clutch out, the rear tires squealed and the car kicked sideways. Luckily
I got it out of gear right away and got it under control, because there was
a truck behind me. As I cruised home (about a quarter of a mile),
I cringed at the nasty sound eminating from the gearbox. After conferring
with my brother we decided that we better go ahead and pull the motor and
transmission out and find out what happened. So, we started disconnecting
things from the motor about 7:00 AM Sunday. By 10:30 AM we had the
entire assembly out, and the gearbox dissassembled enough to see what was
making the noise. 3rd gear was broken. Now the question was,
why did it break? After much head scratching and diagnosis, my brother
and my dad determined that when the gearbox was overhauled the pin that holds
the main thrust washer in place wasn't installed correctly, and it worked
loose. This caused excessive play in the geartrain, and 3rd gear never
engaged completely. Besides the big chunk that was broken out of the gear
(see picture below), the gear is craked all the way around it's circumference.
We're also quite certain that this caused the problems we were having
with 2nd gear, so that should be taken care of also. So now we'll
order the parts, and reassemble everything the weekend after next, and be
back on the road again.
Here's the motor hanging on the hoist. My brother is in the background
working on the transmission.
A shot of the back plate. We decided to take it off to install a
new gasket (with Ultra Blue this time) to see if we can stop the one remaining
leak we have.
Here are the bigger pieces we found floating around in the gearbox...these
all came off of third gear.
