Well, I started off the morning bright and early fully prepared to pull
two engines and transmissions then re-install an engine and transmission
into my newer Midget.
As I pulled the engine and transmission from my '69 donor car I noticed
something interesting - there was a smoothcase transmission coming out
where I had always assumed a ribcase transmission was. My super
dependable '69 transmission was a smoothcase. In the 10+ years that I've
owned that car the one thing I never had to work on was the transmission
so I never noticed before.
Then came the Doh! moment - if the transmission was a smoothcase, then
maybe the shift lever I put in the '70 when I was moving parts from the
'69 to the '70 over the last few weeks was the problem. I never did a
side by side comparison of the two. I liked the longer lever that was in
the '69 and figuring that they were both ribcase transmissions, it
didn't occur to me to look at the lever as the cause of the car not
staying in 2nd gear. When I put them side by side the ribcase shifter
was about a 1/4" longer underneath the ball.
A quick swap back and a test drive and no more second gear problems.
I've never been so happy to have been so stupid ;-)
I got to spend the rest of the day working on the front brakes and I
started installing the new radiator until a few minutes ago when a
pretty strong thunderstorm started up.
The one man double engine pull and install will have to wait for another
day. Hopefully another day far, far away ;-)
Robert
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