shooftie

Still buggering around wondering how to raise the front of the transmission to reduce the output flange downward angle. I supported the front of the transmission and pulled the left hand side mount off. The mount on the other side is much less accessible, coolant lines restrict access. I guess I have to say that this is pretty dull blog stuff. Maybe it helps other folks doing the same thing, but mainly I am treating it as a journal, recording what I have done and reminding me what to do if I have to do it again.

So the rubber mount there is attached to a bracket which is bolted to a beam under the van, and to an ear on the transmission.

It is hard to get a wrench up to the nut on the top of the rubber mounts, but an angle head ratchet wrench (17 mm) can be squeezed in there, and the other end attacked with a socket. I found that loosening the three 13 mm bolts that hold the bracket to the beam allows the ratchet wrench to get up there easier. One funny thing, the EKTA-like diagram above show those bolts coming in from above, they don’t. So the rubber mounts and bracket were pulled out. Here is the bracket on the bench.

I sprayed some white paint on the rubber mount bolt and transmission ear just in case the transmission shifted aand I had to get things back in the right spot. As it turned out, the other mount held things in place.

I compared the rubber mounts, upper and lower (above and below the bracket). The upper one is marked with “U”.

Looks a bit collapsed, saw the same thing with the front diff. mount. The bracket was a bit rusty so I scraped off the rust and slapped some POR on it. While the paint was drying, I had a look at the part of the transmission that was exposed with the mount removed. I found the transmission breather hole which, in the syncro, has a plastic tube leading somewhere higher so that the vent won’t take in water if wading in the van. Sometime in the van’s history the transmission was rebuilt and the breather tube was reconnected to the hose barb on the transmission via a short length of rubber hose. It came off too easily so I used some clear PVC tubing to connect it (heating the stock tubing with heat gun and trying to get it on the hose barb was not a success).

It really is a tighter fit than it looks in the picture, I’m confident it will stay in place. I reassembled the mount, with the lower rubber now on top, and had a few minutes of “quality time” re-installing. I did not succeed in finding any new ideas on adjusting the transmission angle, but I am glad I got the breath line better secured.

PS I also re-installed the “new” propshaft I was babbling on about a few posts back, I had replaced one of the U-joints since. Well, the upshot of all of this was that the driveline vibrations are pretty well gone. Still a very, very slight vibe at 50 kph, but it is really acceptable.