Hi All,
Thanks for the responses to my original query. Some of
the responses were quite interesting, so I thought I
might post them. I apologize in that I cannot give
credit to those who made these suggestions, I deleted
all of the direct responses (whoops.)
I got everything back together last evening, and the
linkage appears to be working okay. I haven't given it a
road test yet, but I'm pretty confident that it'll work
out okay. I will summarize the procedure after I repeat
some of the comments that I recieved.
At any rate, the responses were (paraphrased and from
memory):
"I'm sure that the car was built around those little
bushings"
"I don't use the bushings from the parts suppliers, I
use tubing. The inside diameter is tight on the shaft,
and the outside diameter is exactly correct for the
holes in the firewall. Just grease them up real good
once you get it in there."
"Use a 21 pound hammer, works every time. Unfortunately
you have to take the engine out to use this solution."
"I cut back the lip that extrudes into the passenger
compartment and just push them in. The material that TRF
uses is much stiffer than original, and doesn't conform
well to the opening. I think they should have made the
bushings from Duralin(tm) and molded it with a groove on
the portion that protrudes into the passenger
compartment. The groove could then accept an "E" clip."
"I just sliced them, stuffed them into the hole and
workd them into position by inserting a screw driver
into the hole where the shaft will go, works like a
champ. Once you get them into the hole, you can work the
bushing around so that the slice is located away from
any force that you might be putting on the shaft (like
up top.)"
"I had my friend get under the car and hold the bushing
in place while I pushed it into the hole using a
screwdriver."
"You have to use soapy water that is very hot. Line it
up and push them in using a screw driver. It takes some
doing, but they do go in eventually."
The winner was: I sliced them and worked them in. I
tried clipping off some of the lip that protrudes into
the passenger compartment, but that didn't seem to help
at all. I tried soaking them for about 10 min. in very
hot, very soapy water. When I tried pushing them in, I
just couldn't get any leverage to pop them in place.
After I sliced them and stuck them in the holes, the
whole job took about 20 min. (I had spent probably an
hour or more trying the soap 'em and stuff 'em method.)
I also got a very good suggestion (which I hadn't
thought of prior to dismantling the shaft.) That is:
make sure you scribe a line on the shaft to the clevis
to make re-assembly easier. This is a very good
suggestion, as it would have saved at least 20 min. of
fussing trying to align everything.
Another fellow reminded me that the assembly would be a
bit more difficult than disassembly, due to the fact
that the throttle shaft would now be "tight" in the new
bushing, and that I might have to loosen the
brake/clutch pedals. This was not necessary. The
reassembly was tight, but you can slide the throlltle
shaft into the bushing at a pretty steep angle (30
degrees at least) until you can get the throttle pedal
to clear the opposite kick panel. I did remove the kick
panel rug, however, as a precaution (it is new last
year, and I didn't want to wreck it.)
Again, thanks for all of the suggestions, and sorry for
the windy response.
rml
p.s. my favorite suggestion was the 21 pound hammer!
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