This past weekend, my nephew Nathan and I spent about 7 hours getting the transmission mated to the engine and in place. It was grueling, dirty work which I could not possibly done on my own. I owe Nathan a great deal for his help.
We ran into many problems along the way. The torque converter was quite heavy and was accidentally dropped by me causing my first real fluid spill. Getting the transmission perfectly in place to mate with the engine was very difficult without a special transmission jack. We just used the engine lift to get it roughly into place.
Then we just manhandled it so that the dowel pins on the engine lined up with the tranny case. It is not nearly as easy as it sounds. The tranny did not line up well, and even when it was connected to the engine, it did not fit right in the frame. We ended up having to loosen everything up, manhandle the engine as well, to get everything to be where it needed to be. Then we tightened the case to the block.
Big mistake! We did not have the holes of the flexplate lined up with the studs on the torque converter, so when we tightened everything, it did not line up right. We only learned of this when we tried to turn the crankshaft by hand and nothing would budge. So we had to undo everything, several hours in, and start over. This time we verified that the plate and torque converter holes were matching before we started putting things back together. Fortunately, it seemed okay, so we proceeded to put it all back together again, only to find out that once everything was where it belonged, the studs on the torque converter did not go through quite far enough through the holes on the flexplate to be able to install the nuts needed to hold the two pieces together. Eventually, we got 3 out of 4 to snug up a bit, but the fourth seems almost impossible to make work, and I am not sure that the first 3 have engaged enough threads to hold long-term. I am not sure how to proceed from here.
