broncojunkie
Well-Known Member
...And why my cars will never, ever be finished!
Since I traded off my old f150 a while back, me and the wife are sort-of down to 1 vehicle, not including the 88gt. No big deal, since I've basically been living on a river boat for the past year. I finally got some time off, although, I had meetings to go to all last week. It took place about an hour away. Since the wife is scared of the mustang (not because of power...just that she has trouble shifting it for some reason), I decided I'd just drive it back and forth. It's really the first time I've driven this old mustang for any significant distance. But the problem was that it gave me a chance to see just how bad the transmission was. A nagging driveshaft vibration also hit my last nerve. I've replaced a few parts to remedy it, but nothing worked. So I set out to replace the t5 and hopefully fix the vibration issue somewhere along the way.
As I dug into this thing, I found other parts needing replacement. Crossmember bushings (I believe this was my vibration issue), transmission mount, clutch fork, throwout bearing, etc. Some of it was legitimately just worn out. Other parts were rigged by a previous owner and I decided to fix it properly
While installing the new t5, I had an issue getting it to slip all the way in. I was lacking about 3/4". Only after taking it back out a third time did I get a good enough look inside to see that the pilot bushing had cracked into 3 pieces. I hadn't planned on going in that deep, but there I went. Removed the clutch, flywheel, pilot bushing (it pretty much just fell out at that point) etc. Since I had it all out, I figured what the heck. So I got a new Zoom clutch kit and new flywheel. I finally got everything pretty much put back together, except for the mid-pipe. I worked on it pretty much all afternoon and just finished up around 9:30pm. I plan on doing the exhaust tomorrow. I still have a couple small issues to figure out, but I'll re-address those tomorrow.
Am I the only one who never gets lucky with a simple fix? Seems like mine always turn into a big ordeal.
Since I traded off my old f150 a while back, me and the wife are sort-of down to 1 vehicle, not including the 88gt. No big deal, since I've basically been living on a river boat for the past year. I finally got some time off, although, I had meetings to go to all last week. It took place about an hour away. Since the wife is scared of the mustang (not because of power...just that she has trouble shifting it for some reason), I decided I'd just drive it back and forth. It's really the first time I've driven this old mustang for any significant distance. But the problem was that it gave me a chance to see just how bad the transmission was. A nagging driveshaft vibration also hit my last nerve. I've replaced a few parts to remedy it, but nothing worked. So I set out to replace the t5 and hopefully fix the vibration issue somewhere along the way.
As I dug into this thing, I found other parts needing replacement. Crossmember bushings (I believe this was my vibration issue), transmission mount, clutch fork, throwout bearing, etc. Some of it was legitimately just worn out. Other parts were rigged by a previous owner and I decided to fix it properly
While installing the new t5, I had an issue getting it to slip all the way in. I was lacking about 3/4". Only after taking it back out a third time did I get a good enough look inside to see that the pilot bushing had cracked into 3 pieces. I hadn't planned on going in that deep, but there I went. Removed the clutch, flywheel, pilot bushing (it pretty much just fell out at that point) etc. Since I had it all out, I figured what the heck. So I got a new Zoom clutch kit and new flywheel. I finally got everything pretty much put back together, except for the mid-pipe. I worked on it pretty much all afternoon and just finished up around 9:30pm. I plan on doing the exhaust tomorrow. I still have a couple small issues to figure out, but I'll re-address those tomorrow.
Am I the only one who never gets lucky with a simple fix? Seems like mine always turn into a big ordeal.
