Friday, January 1, 2010

The saga of the Kaput Transmission

For those of you who remember from the last post, My police cruiser was not in the parade and this is the reason. The Tranny is kaput (means broken).
It seems I did a little damage to the syncro gears, well not a little but a lot. This turned out to be quite a learning experience for me, not only about how the tranny works, but about the stuff people are made of.
The first person to offer to help was Jack Yale who didn't hesitate and when the word got out that I needed help, people came out of the woodwork. Everybody had a suggestion as to what I should do, some of the suggestions I couldn't put in print.

Here are some of the parts after they were sandblasted with the help of a fellow by the name of Mike Bughi, who I didn't even know. But he insisted that the work be done in his garage which was heated and very organized as you can see from these pictures.


He,Mike Bughi, said I was to do the work and he would over see, well that didn't last long. He first sandblasted the parts then painted them, and ended up doing quite a bit of the actual work.

See what I mean about neat and organized. This is a layout of all the parts, new ones and the old ones cleaned and painted ready for reassembly.

Here is Wayne Williams (one of our senior club members) hard at work getting ready to start putting the tranny back together.

Here is Jack again trying to confuse Wayne.

This young gentleman is the fellow I told you abut, Mike Bughi and camera hog Jack Yale, with the finished tranny.
There she is, I hope she works as good as she looks.
We had help from another fellow not pictured here, but equally as helpful, John Trumbo.
Thanks very much to every one who helped.
I don't want you to think that we over worked ourselves, we took time out to play some games such as " I can't find the tool I was just using" and " where are the bolts that go here" and last but not least " where does this part go".
All in all it was a life enriching experience, thanks again.
In my next post I will share the experience of putting it back in the car and whether it worked or not.