On 27 Nov 2006 at 20:25, s1500@comcast.net wrote:
> An so begun has the great winter project of removing the
> transmission.
Didn't Ganadalf say something like that in the Return Of The King,
the movie?
> Those 4 nut & bolt combos on the flange at the rear were a royal
> pain. The black cowling around it made it almost impossible
This is a Spitfire 1500, right? That black cowling is held in by a
few sheetmetal screws into the hump in the body and by a seal of tar-
like putty. Pulling it out makes access to the driveshaft bolts easy
and you will need good access to tighten them back up anyway. Plus
you'll need that clearance when you pull the gearbox away from the
clutch.
> The almost nonexistant gap between the nut(or bolt head) and
> the inner part of the flange gave very little angle to work with.
You need two 9/16th's spanners, and IIRC you can't get a closed-end
wrench on one end. A good "semi-open" wrench, i.e. a 5-sided (from 6
points) wrench is useful for the low-clearance end.
> Oh, and if you move it around, the car moves back & forth.
You can, of course, lock the handbrake and/or put the tranny in gear
to keep the flange from turning. But you'll need to hold both ends
of the bolt to tighten it up. They should be Nyloc nuts so you can't
just spin them with your fingers.
> With the magic of air tools, the bellhousing bolts came off.
Aaaagh! That means the load of the engine and gearbox is putting a
bending load on the tranny input shaft. Put a support under the
engine now before doing anything else. Use a small jack. (If it's a
hydraulic jack, see if it settles slowly while you're not watching.)
To distribute the load use a piece of wood, a foot-long section of
2x4, between the jack and the oil pan. Or place the jack (with load-
distributing material) under the seam where the bellhousing hits the
block. Raise the jack slowly until you can see it taking the load
off the rear mount. When you finally pull out the rear mount bolts
the load of the tranny will still be supported by its input shaft,
but that's much lighter than the block.
> The only thing I have yet to unbolt is the mounting plate near the
> rear. Once that is unbolted, I assume then the transmission is
> loose?
Support the engine NOW. (You did like I told you, right?) Once the
rear mount is free, jack the entire thing up further (see? - you need
that jack there), enough so that the flange clears the driveshaft
hump in the body.
> I have yet to remove the exhaust
You don't need to. Just loosen one or more of the bolts holding the
olive joint together. You really just need enough flexibility to
raise the engine without warping the pipe.
Once the flange clears the hump you can pull the whole gearbox
backwards away from the block. It helps if you've removed the
passenger seat. Some people like to pull other stuff from under the
dash, like the passenger's parcel shelf, but I don't.
> getting the transmission out is a longer process than I thought
It gets easier with practice. I can pull and re-install my GT6
gearbox in an afternoon, all by myself! The Spitfire doesn't have
the headroom problem but that danged OD makes the it much heavier to
re-install. Muscle work ain't innit!
Good luck. (Assembly is the reverse procedure. :-)
--
Jim Muller
jimmuller@rcn.com
'80 Spitfire, '70 GT6+
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