Free--range Trannies!

[Mr. Pockets]

Well, my transmission is no longer confined to the cruel cage that is the SVX. It is on the floor, having only recently (less than an hour ago) been separated from my car.

You knew there was an 'unfortunately...' coming up, didn't you?

Unfortunately, we found that my transmission mount is broken on one side. The rubber has unbonded itself from the metal on just one side. No dealers have parts desk hours on Saturday, and the thing would probably be $150 anyway - since it's $84 at subaruparts.com.

So, I guess the installation of the 'new' transmission has to wait until I have a new mount.

We've talked about options, including putting the old mount on until I have a new one, but it's broken anyway, so there's little point to installing it. Another option was trying to find a way to bond the rubber back to the metal. There's a thin layer of rubber still on the metal, and it's clean, so we're trying to find a way to glue it permanently.

I may even try a liberal coating of super glue.

Hey, why not? I'm gonna throw it out anyway.

[wawazat??]

Sorry I can't be of immediate assistance though.

Todd

[Mr. Pockets]

Well, just for grins I epoxied the tranny mount together ans set it in a vise. We'll see a little later whether or not it has any strength, but I'm replacing it with an intact tranny mount anyway.

So this is just an experiment.

You know, in case we ever have any members join from...Greenland...and they're out in the middle of the frozen tundra...and have a broken tranny mount and have to get home...yet still have web access to tell us all this...

[LarryIII]

Nick,

Try Barge rubber cement. You will find it at a real shoemaker shop. Look up shoe finding stores in the yellow pages.
Good Luck.

[Mr. Pockets]

Originally posted by LarryIII
Nick,

Try Barge rubber cement. You will find it at a real shoemaker shop. Look up shoe finding stores in the yellow pages.
Good Luck.

Thanks for the recommendation, Larry. That's a good idea, but I should be able to get ahold of a more viable mount this week. Tomorrow we'll get the car -mostly- back together so we can fit the mount in next week and have the car ready to roll in a couple hours or so.

The epoxy, by the way, did no good whatsoever. Rubber is just too flexible a material for it to bond with effectively. I'm actually a little relieved that it didn't work. I didn't want to worry about a tranny mount that I patched together with $5 of epoxy.

Originally posted by LarryIII
Nick,

Try Barge rubber cement. You will find it at a real shoemaker shop. Look up shoe finding stores in the yellow pages.
Good Luck.

Hey, thanks Larry, they didn't have Barge in stock but they found my shoes!

Randy (They were on the lowest end of my legs, tied up there with little ropes, go figure) ii

[Mr. Pockets]

Well, here I am at work after a long weekend under the SVX. Before you ask, no, I did not drive the car home last night. It's almost done - almost - except for the broken tranny mount. Hopefully I'll get one this week and I can finish the car on Saturday. All that's left to do is put in that mount and put the exhaust back on - so we're looking at 1-2 hours of work remaining. It's very disappointing to be so close, but I'm glad that the new tranny is in and that work is over with.

The job took us all weekend, and we could have been done had it not been for the tranny mount. We also had to install the new transmission twice because the torque converter wasn't seated correctly. Wait, no, that's not exactly right. The input shaft (I think it's the input shaft - it's the innermost one) had slid out (maybe on the drive down, maybe while we were installing it, maybe before we got it, who knows) and needed to be reseated. Hopefully everything's fine and, when I drop the car and try to drive it away, I don't shred the tranny before I get out of the driveway. Everything bolted up correctly, anyway, without any binding, so presumably it's okay.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to align the torque converter and shafts before you install the tranny. With a torque converter full of ATF, this tranny weighs pretty close to 300 pounds. Once you get it up on the studs (which are hard to line up, considering how much this thing weighs), finding out you have to take it back down again is a real heartbreak.

I took photos all throughout the process. I can't provide a complete pictorial how-to, but things I ran into that haven't been addressed on this site are documented. Besides, I figure that, if you're undertaking this process, you're competent enough to not need a photo of every step anyway.

Oh, and I also have what I think are photos of the least precarious home tranny install yet.

I have 4 frames left on my second 'tranny install' roll of film, and those are for the celebration of driving the car away once it's all done. When that roll is finished, I'll have the photos up here next Monday or Tuesday.