Lets see, that must have been 1962. I was a street racer in San Diego Ca. I had various cars among them a 55 Ford 2Door sedan, a 57 chevy and a 55 Plymouth coupe. I was always having to rebuild a T5 transmission or a differential on sunday so I could get to work monday. I got to be pretty good at it.

Last week I pulled the T5 three speed from Luceille (The other woman, AKA a 1952 Ford pickup). When I opened up the side cover it was like bieng 18 all over again. I knew exactly what to do next and what tools I would need.

I guess this is what restoration is all about. I had so much fun workng with those gears. I can't wait till I pull the differential. What Fun!

 

I agree. I was also 18 in 62. I got to the point in Willard that I could remove, rebuilt (with used parts mostly) and reinstall the flatmotor trans in 2 hours flat- "curb to curb". That was when Willard ran a 56 Buick nailhead thru that flathead transmission. I broke it a number of times! I think that my days of sliding under the truck and taking the trans out or putting it in without a helper are about over. If I remember correctly (been a long time) I pulled it up thru the cab. The light duty 3 speed was pretty light in weight however after a number of rebuilds I found a heavy duty 3 speed. That fixed the problem but was a bit of a bear to wrestle into position working alone. Today I would be using my engine crane-older but wiser now!

When I was active in the Early Ford V8 club I did a tech session on rebuilding the flatmotor transmisson a few times. It is an old friend!

 

Isn't it funny when you read a magazine or an internet message board how the guys are sweating the difficulties of doing work on an old car. What is the proper way to do this or that. The precision detail it takes to do it the proper way and the special tools to do this procedure or that one. The weeks it's going to take to get something done. Then you guys talk about racing one day, beating the heck out your vehicle and rebuilding it the next day so you can get to work on Monday. At the time you were some green kids who could do the job with used parts and whatever tools you had on hand. I guess at the time you didn't realize how difficult the job was. I remember crawling under my beater car when I was younger and repairing it with a very limited budget and making it run until the next piece broke down, those were the days, even though I didn't reallize it at the time.

It's great to here the stories. It only goes to show you can get something done if it has to get done.

 

Hi Everyone,
This one caught my eye this morning. It reminded me of a situation I got into when I was 18. It was 1963 and I had just graduated from high school and I was waiting to leave to go into the Air Force. I went out for an evening ride with my girlfriend. We were about twenty miles up river on the same state route I lived on. I wasn't hot rodding or anything like that, just tooling along. Kinda like in the old Chuck Berry song... Anyway, we started through a little village and there was one traffic light there. It turned red and I stopped. It turned green and it was like I was in neutral. the car was a 53 Merc with an automatic that I believe was made by Borg Warner. In those old automatics there were two pumps, a front one driven by a hub on the torque converter and a rear one driven by the tail shaft. Both contributed to the hydraulic system in the tranny. If either one was working it would run. Apparently somewhere on the trip the front pump gave out but since it was rolling the rear pump kept things working. I knew that if I could get a push the system would pick up and I could get home as long as their were no stops. At that time there weren't so I managed to get a local to get it going with a push. I got it home and into the driveway where it stopped. I had a major problem. I was dues to go to the Air Force in three days and I really only had two days to work on it and $100.00 to my name. The next morning I got up and jacked the car up and took out the tranny. It turned out that the front pump had siezed and broke off the two little tabs on the torque converter hub. I went to a local back woods junkyard and found a tranny with a good front pump and a torque converter with a good drive hub. Those old TCs were bolted together so you could take them apart and rebuild them. I stoped by the local parts store and bought the gaskets, fluid and a big "O" ring for the TC. By about three that afternoon I had the car back together and running, and I still had fifty bucks left. I drove it all day on the day before I left. It wasn't that long before I lost the girl and the car. I really miss that car...

 

LOL.....

I have some similar stories but the timing is alot different. I was 18 in 1983, not 63. I had a variety of cars and trucks back then that were kept running on a shoestring. Heck, after letting water get in the cylinder on a 390 I was stuffing in a 1960 F-100 along with 4x4 running gear and locking the engine up. I ended up pulling the intake and one head. I put a chunk of 2x4 on top of the piston, put a bottle jack on top of that and wrapped a chain around the engine and over thejack so I would have something to push against. I was able to press the piston down a little bit. I got it all cleaned up and I put it back together, reusing the head gasket. I drove that truck for several years after that and then sold it to a buddy who had if for another 10yrs before rolling it.

My street racer was a 66 plymouth satellite with a built 383 and a 4spd. Everytime I turned around I was replacing the clutch, or U joints. There were a couple of times where I had the tranny out and parts scattered all over the driveway while I tore apart a spare 3spd tranny (again with parts all over the driveway) and put all the best parts and bearing back in my 4spd. Man it sure take alot of shampoo to wash 90w out of hair that was way too long.

Bobby

 

Bobby,

You did it all wrong! You were suppose to have the block magnafluxed, boiled out, resleeved. You were just lucky, that engine and tranny shouldn't operated without spending a couple of grand!

Think about this; in '63 or '83, whenever, you were young, and fairly inexperienced and poor, (other than age nothing else seems to have changed much) working on cars and trucks that today would be considered a classic today. I wonder why it was good enough back then to work on them in a day or two in the driveway but now the "experts" go to great lengths to stress certain procedures have to be done to the most exacting degree, and cost.

I still like doing my own stuff, whenever I can. I don't see the need to spend hours and $$ on these old crates. My trucks the way they are now will out last me by years.

 

I, like Bobby, was 18 in 83. I had a German built Mercury Capri that decided to eat a tooth or 2 on the transmission mainshaft. I found a replacement from the wrecking yard, but the case was cracked. In replacing the countershaft, I realized that I needed a shorter shaft to keep all of the tiny roller bearings in place during assembly. The only thing that I could find around the house was the leg of Mom's ironing board You can just imagine what kind of grief I got over that one.

 

LOL...Nice one Jeff. My mother also suffered some at my ingenuity. Have I ever mentioned that a dishwaser make a great parts cleaner? Mom pretty much blew her stack one night when she came home after work, opened up the dishwasher to find the oil pan, valve covers, timing cover, and intake manifold from a small block Dodge in the dishwasher....ooops

Bob, yea, I still pretty much do most of my own work as well with the exception of my company truck. My company has service contracts with some local shops so I just take the truck in and let them go at it.

Bobby

 

You gotta love you guys, laughing my a-- off, I really like the parts washer, great stories

 

I was 18 in 1988, and all I got was a date with the military, lol. All the breaking down the humvee did, was repaired by the motorpool, lol. Not til I got out that I had to do all my repairs. One classic story is when the tcase (NP203) broke. the extension housing made of aluminum, cracked a chunk off. It was -30F in Ely, MN. That whole month of January never got above zero. Anyway, I JB welded the extension housing back together, layed it over the heat register in the living room overnight, and went back outside the next day to rebuild the tcase in the front yard laying in a snowbank with my hands grasping the trouble light to put feeling back into them. Needle bearing (over a hundred of them) had to be installed with bare fingers.....-30F steel is pretty cold. Anyway it got back together, and I was back on the road again.

JB weld: $3.00
To have a machine shop weld the aluminum: $150.00
I took the $3.00 route cuz I had no money.
Seeing that it worked for several years since: priceless.

 

I was 18 in '68.... too many similar stories to tell. As I read your stories I'm reminded that my youthful energy and enthusiasm perfectly offset my ignorance and lack of money.........

 

Yea, but back then I would try anything, oh yea I still do, it just takes me longer than it did when I was 18 in 64.

 

i was 18 in 83 also . my driver / street racer was my 64 impala ss . had a 410 small block in it amongst many other variants of the 400 sb . i had driveshafts laying around ready to go , and had the bolts for the motor mounts and tranny ground to a blunt point with holes drilled to pin them . all the wiring was put together with quick connectors . i also had two or three rebuilt glides laying around as i was always breaking them . i could do an engine and tranny change within 2hours tops . i spent all my free time rebuilding or scrounging for replacement parts for the ones i broke .

 

I remember getting arrested for drag racing when I was 18. I had a 66 Mustang GT with a 351 Windsor stuffed in the engine compartment. The guys I was racing (also had a Mustang) were in the military so the cops had to let us go on a citation versus taking us to jail or the military guys would be in big trouble when they returned to the base. I had to go to court and found the citation was a misdemeanor. The judge believed my story and let me off on a speeding violation. On the way home from the court, I got pulled over by a motorcop for loud exhaust. I think I had 8 tickets in that year and had my insurance cancelled. Had to explain that one to dad.... In 1963, I think I was watching cartoons or maybe coloring in my coloring books. Knowing myself..... I was most likely playing and racing with my collection of Matchbox cars.

 

When I was 16 (1960) I learned that one doesn't pop the clutch on a 1947 Ford, because to repair the damage that caused, a spring spreader is required to remove the rear end, then one has to remove the torque tube to get at the transmission.

Transverse spring spreaders back then didn't grow on trees, and finding one to borrow took me a week.

Meanwhile, my nice all original $150.00 Ford Woodie (with a Columbia) remained parked in the driveway.
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Dave Boley: 1953 Merc's used the Borg-Warner supplied Ford-O-Matic * 2 speed, which Mercury called Merc-O-Matic.

As gutless as it was, nothing beat the Chevy's Power-Glide for gutlessness...the cars could barely could get out of their own way with this trans.

1950's adage: "Slip and slide...with Power-Glide."

* Studebaker used this same trans from 1956 thru 1966, calling it Flash-O-Matic.