Another Mopar Off My Bucket List - Barracuda Fastback
The driveway was still littered with parts and tools left lying after working on the Roadrunner. This morning I spent some time moving the clutter back inside. That torqueflite was still outside. Rather than spend the effort to get it back in the garage I figured I'd be better off assembling the transmission adapter and fitting it behind the motor.
The adapter is fairly simple. One thing I hadn't counted on was the remnants of the old Ford adapter that was used with the fuel altered. The back of the crank still has a sleeve on it. I may have to either put heat on it or try splitting it to get it off.
The new adapter has a sleeve/spacer that cannot go onto the back of the crankshaft until the old sleeve is removed.
In addition to removing that sleeve, I'll need to cut my rear engine plate. I'm not sure if I should open it all the way up or if I should leave some material for extra strength. The plate is 1/4" thick and will affect spacing. I need to figure out what affect it will have and if I need to have any other machine work done to compensate. The thought of cutting the mounting plate to fit around the perimeter of the adapter occurred to me. If it fit snuggly around the outside of the aluminum adapter I could have them welded together without that extra 1/4" pushing the transmission back.
Without anyone here to give me a hand, I used the cherry picker to lift it into place. Although the body was tilted up the lift was so tall that it didn't want to clear the body as I maneuvered the transmission in. The tabs that I tack-welded for the seat mount had to come back off and I can see that I'll be doing more chassis modification for the driveshaft. I'm not sure I'll be able to get the shaft angle figured out without getting a rear end assembled first.
I'm glad to have the transmission in place but there's still a lot of work to do to make it all work together.
The driveway was still littered with parts and tools left lying after working on the Roadrunner. This morning I spent some time moving the clutter back inside. That torqueflite was still outside. Rather than spend the effort to get it back in the garage I figured I'd be better off assembling the transmission adapter and fitting it behind the motor.
The adapter is fairly simple. One thing I hadn't counted on was the remnants of the old Ford adapter that was used with the fuel altered. The back of the crank still has a sleeve on it. I may have to either put heat on it or try splitting it to get it off.
The new adapter has a sleeve/spacer that cannot go onto the back of the crankshaft until the old sleeve is removed.
In addition to removing that sleeve, I'll need to cut my rear engine plate. I'm not sure if I should open it all the way up or if I should leave some material for extra strength. The plate is 1/4" thick and will affect spacing. I need to figure out what affect it will have and if I need to have any other machine work done to compensate. The thought of cutting the mounting plate to fit around the perimeter of the adapter occurred to me. If it fit snuggly around the outside of the aluminum adapter I could have them welded together without that extra 1/4" pushing the transmission back.
Without anyone here to give me a hand, I used the cherry picker to lift it into place. Although the body was tilted up the lift was so tall that it didn't want to clear the body as I maneuvered the transmission in. The tabs that I tack-welded for the seat mount had to come back off and I can see that I'll be doing more chassis modification for the driveshaft. I'm not sure I'll be able to get the shaft angle figured out without getting a rear end assembled first.
I'm glad to have the transmission in place but there's still a lot of work to do to make it all work together.