67 GTS 4-Speed: Daily Summer Driver

This past thanksgiving weekend I went back to my folks place and got a little work done on the GTS. I had my sister help me tighten up the ball stud for the Z bar and I installed the rod that goes from the pedal to the Z bar. I actuated it a couple times and there is very little movement within the linkage as compared to the movement of the pedal. I believe that is due to the design, at least I hope. So if that is indeed the case, there is no issues with fitment.

After some screwing around I got the column installed. The car was originally a manual steering car but I wanted to make it power steering. So I took the manual column, put a 68 power steering shaft in it and tried to install it a couple months ago and nothing lined up. So I installed the manual shaft back in and tried to install it and now it pushed the column mount points to far back! in this process I adjusted the top collars and the coupler. Seeing there was about a 3 inch difference between the shafts and I was about 3 inches to far back with the manual shaft I figured that power steering shaft had to work. Installed the power steering shaft back into the column and BAM! everything finally lined up and is in place I got it loosely bolted in.

With all that the next time Im in the area I plan on making sure everything is tight, fluids are all there and try to bring fire to it to see how the exhaust sounds!

I also got a friend to help me out with rebuilding the center chunk of the rear end. The car came with a 741 case installed with an unknown gear and differential. The information I received indicated the car came new with a 3.23 suregrip, and when I did the wheel turning test I believe it still is a suregrip, but I never tried any further to determine the gear set. Well I found a couple 489 cases laying around so I figured Id use the known suregrip I got at Carlisle a few years ago, put 3.55 gears in it and run the stronger case. unfortunately I didnt grab any pictures during this process, but:

disassembly was fairly simple. The bearing caps and adjusters need to be reinstalled in the same manner, so the caps were marked and the adjusters were kept with their respective sides. the carrier came out after that and the ring gear was removed and tossed (2.76 gear set). The yoke was removed and the pinion gear was hammered out. The bearings were removed from the pinion so the shims could be reused. The sure grip carrier I got was abused to the point that pinion gears it had and its pinion shaft was badly marred. So we took the pinion shaft out of the open carrier and cleaned up the ID of the suregrip carrier pinions and everything went together smoothly. The cones were in really good shape. So the carrier was reassembled and the case tightened back together using the marks we made during disassembly. The ring gear was tight going on, but that was tightened down as well. We ended up reusing the carrier bearings that were on the open carrier, and a cool tool to remove them was used. When it comes to hammering on the pinion and carrier bearings a tip the guy gave me was to cut the old races and use them to hammer on your new bearings. With the shim and the back pinion bearing on we set the bearing preload, installed the yoke, and then placed in the carrier. The back lash was set and we checked the mesh pattern. Surprisingly everything lined up on the first try!! according to him we got lucky. So we removed the carrier, removed the yoke and hammered out the pinion to clean the mesh indicator off the pinion gear. A tip he gave me was never to leave that on the pinion because it would give you a false reading. With that the pinion was reinstalled, crush sleeve installed and the bearing and yoke installed. The bearing preload was set again and the carrier with ring gear was installed with the backlash set. Checked the gear pattern one more time and everything was good! ready to be installed!

So like I mentioned above when I get time again I would like to start the car, make sure it sounds right, and check the clutch and see how the trans shifts. After that the rear end will be removed and the new center chunk would be installed with the rear brakes. When that is done only a master cylinder needs to be installed and the car should be able to be test driven!!! fun stuff!