Well my shoulder is to the point where I could begin working on the B again without feeling like somebody has stabbed a few knives into my arm.
I pulled the cross member off the transmission to clean it up and replace the rubber mounts…what a joy that was.
I supported the rear of the tranny with a floor jack and started trying to pull the bolts off. The four on the tranny mounts weren’t so bad though I did find that I only had three since one has vanished. The four bolts holding the cross member to the body were really tight but they haven’t been turned in 20 or more years so that is understandable. I can already tell by how the plate inside the frame moves around that they are going to be a bitch to get back in.
Getting the cross member over the exhaust wasn’t so much fun either. I didn’t want to drop the exhaust so I took a 6-foot brass pipe I had and levered the exhaust down just far enough that I could wiggle the cross member over it. I know that I’m going to have to drop at least some of the exhaust to get the cross member back in so more fun for me coming up.
When I got the cross member off I found some nice things. First, the rubber mounts were all but gone. The large square mounts were half hard as a rock and half mushy goop about the consistency of soft foam rubber soaked in motor oil. The center pin bushings were still kind of round but were also gummy mush.
Since the cross member is u-shaped and points upward it acts as a collection point for all sorts of garbage. It was nearly full of the oil/grease/dirt gunk that builds up on cars after a long time. I measured six heaping cups of the stuff inside the cross member after I scraped it all out.
After much scraping, wire brushing, degreasing, washing, more degreasing and more washing I finally got to the point (after two hours) that it was clean enough to paint.
I also cleaned and painted the engine/tranny stayrod, mounting plates and hardware and those will get new nuts, bolts and rubber buffer pads as well.
I put on two coats of gloss black on the cross member and all the mounting hardware. I’ll put it all back together tonight and see if I wedge the bastard back in place.
I’ve been working on the electrical as well. I ran a new white wire for the melted one in the harness that powers the fuel pump. I also ran two additional heavy wires along with it to the rear for future power needs such as an amplifier in the trunk. To get the wires through the sub frame that the factory harness goes through on the underside of the car I slid a wire coat hanger through the rubber bushings, bent a hook in the end of it and looped the three new wires around it and pulled it through. It was a tight fit but it worked.
I taped the new wires to the factory harness with the correct blue tape and then opened the clamps and reattached them to the underside as the factory original harness was.
I dropped the starter to change out the clutch master flexible hose with the stainless braided one and took the opportunity to clean up the starter harness and all the other little sub-harnesses in the area. I’m adding two additional 10-gauge wires to the power hookup point on the starter and running them up into the engine compartment. These will be taped into the harness and used to power the new additional fuse panels I’ll be adding for new electrical components. I’ll be adding fog and driving lights, daytime running lights and (hopefully) seat heaters so all of those will need new dedicated power. I’m certainly not going to trust the 35 year old factory wiring for that! Of course, all of the new wiring will have relays to take the load off the wiring…as soon as I figure out how to do that! Time to call my buddy Paul.
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