Greetings . . .
I can’t believe that it has been over six years since the car went up on caster jack stands:
Inliners Post circa '10 I had thrown a cover over the driveline (on the bench) as I thought that piece was done after I swapped the 3.55 gears.
But alas less than a year later I was presented with the opportunity to acquire an uber-rare Truckstell mechanical overdrive.
So I disassembled the third member and cut it down to fit the Truckstell flange:
A guy in western Ohio with a large lathe cut down the torque tube to fit (-20”):
The unit was purported to have low miles so I simply flushed the insides – cleaned and refinished the outer surfaces. Bench testing has been promising and these units are said to be stout and bullet proof. I even have the tip-toe circuit which can be driven off the clutch as well the accelerator. I used heat shrink wrap to replace the leather sheath on the original cables. What remained of the original leather sheaths turned to dust at every touch:
In ’14 the project was really feeling heavy. There seemed to be so much to do and it was hard to prioritize. Moreover, some of the grunt work was really un-rewarding. So I decided to cut the project in two and to make a push on getting the engine back in between the frame rails. This meant refurbishing the front end and the firewall. This created a tale of two projects – with the front end (fire wall forward) under assembly while the rear two thirds and floors were yet to be stripped and finished:
This was necessary because the underside was a real drag. Someone had ‘undercoated’ everything with road tar. The stuff came off by the pound:
In some areas it was dry and broke off like peanut brittle – in other places it was gooey and required heat to let go. Underneath the tar was a mixture of clean metal, surface rust and some rot. I treated everything with POR15 + Eastwood’s Rust Encapsulator + top coat:
Having the project divided in two was the only way to stay sane. I would spend hours scraping underneath and get so bummed I didn’t want to do anymore work. But I would then wake the next day and work on clean under hood detail items out front.
The driveline is now back in the car. The same dolly that pulled the original was used to position the restored item:
I could not install the driveline with the overdrive attached. It was just too unwieldy. I had to bolt the Truckstell on after the rear-end was attached to the leaf springs and the frame. This meant splitting the universal joint to marry it with the transmission.
I have been collecting parts for this project for over 15 years now. Pulling boxes down from the attic is like Christmas day:
I hated to have to split the factory assembled u-joint but that’s what it took to get the Truckstell mated with transmission at the ball housing:
Regards,
Stock49
