Elvira gets her Tranny

"Elvira" our 1960 Falcon Ranchero, you might have read in the newsletter a few weeks ago in #78 that the 3 speed manual transmission "blew up". Well, today, Sunday March 11th, Tony DeBlasio came over to the house to swap out the broken transmission for a used one that I acquired from Dave Dean.

The swap over went quickly, then the test drive exhibited a weird hopping vibration, we thought it couldn't be the U-Joints as they booth have been replaced. We called Steve Mc and he said it has to be the U-Joint. Tony & I then crawled under the ancient truck to take out the drive shat just one more time. Further inspection revealed that the front U-joint had lost it's keeper clip and was working it's way out of the yoke. The loss of this clip must have been during one of the previous times we had the shaft out. the clip was still laying in the center of the joint. After pushing the needle bearing cap back into the assembly and replacing the clip, we once again replaced the drive shaft.

The final test drive proved to be the last one we would need to do. No vibration and about half of the noise level that this vehicle had demonstrated since it's purchase over 3 years ago.

After Tony left, I performed a further autopsy of the broken transmission. What I found was that the last time someone had this transmission apart, replaced the bolts holding the cover plate for the input shaft backwards. One or more of these bolts worked their way into the inside of the gearbox and into the gears. Over many years of "Bouncing" around and grinding up a piece jammed into the gears and, well, one piece ended up where it should not have been, BOOM!

Anyway, Elvira will be back "Cruising" this week!

Thank You, to Tony and Steve.