6/06 - Currently the car is equipped with an A-413 ATX transmission and what can I say it is a slush box and not fun to drive. Some time in the next month a MTX from an R/T will be installed and oh what fun I will be to drive a stick again since it has been over 6 years since I last drove a stick.
8/06 - The transmission swap finally occurred and it was a heck of a swap too. So the day for the conversion finally came yesterday and considering all of the work that needed to be done I was a bit skeptical it would ever get done in one day. We started the project at about 9:30am and the first incident happened shortly after we started the day off by me dumping almost all of the transmission fluid onto the floor of my dad's garage. The rest of the day we had to deal with the oil dry stuff all over the damn place. After the fluid incident things started to progress well and Gary made mention that things were coming apart and going together way to easy and by lunch break at 1:00pm we had the transmission already out and the pedal assembly and interior components installed. Things went back together quickly aside from the snag with the transmission where we had the car too far off the ground to easily get the transmission installed. The transmission sitting in there was the major highlight of the day and things took an ugly turn for the worst when Gary pushed in the clutch pedal and the clutch went in way to easy. We figured it was a fluke and continued on but the issue with the cable came back to haunt us when the car was finally buttoned up. I went to start it up and the car wouldn't fire up. Gary found the wire we forgot to ground and that issue was all taken care of but once we got the car to fire up the clutch cable thing came back with a vengeance. The clutch wouldn't depress enough to disengage and we finally came to the conclusion the cable self adjuster plastic pieces were trashed. So I made some calls and found a clutch cable but I had to drive 40 minutes to get it. After that mess I finally got the cable installed and the car finally could go into gear. My first impression with the stick, intake, and AFX ECU were like oh crap this thing is gonna be a beast. It had all kinds of pick up and had power all over the place.......at half throttle.
Big thanks to Gary for the awesome job he and his son did.
Another big thanks for Jim bailing me out with the clutch cable that worked better then it looked
Another big thanks to my parents for putting up with my BS and allowing me to work on the car in their garage.
I think this is about it for the big projects until I get my own garage. BTW - my idea of big projects doesn't include changing out the radiator or installing an MSD ignition.
Lessons learned from this experience:
- Always buy extra parts that could potentially break because chances are they will or they will get lost
- Always have someone onboard who has done the project more then once because without them it will more then likely take longer
- Always expect the unexpected and never expect anything to be easy......if it is easy then you did something wrong and you will find out about it sooner or later at the most inopportune time
- Always keep the oil dry just a few feet from where you are working
- Always find the hottest day of the year to do major mods because they become that much more challenging when you are sweating your ass off
- Never let your spouse attempt to nail you down on a time frame for any sort of project unless you double the time required to do the install