A Fond Farewell to the Old Exhaust

The Eagle is getting slowly closer to being able to spread its wings again. Of course, what will happen when it does remains to be seen, but there is cause for optimism now, at least. I’ve trimmed the pinched-off end of the exhaust air hose so that I can bridge the gap with some rubber hose as soon as I can procure some. The back half of the exhaust system came out on Saturday and in the coming weeks will all be replaced.

But once that rubber hose is in, then the transmission can go back in. This was delayed somewhat in the last couple weeks, and I’ll explain why. You can see in the last post how tall the transmission is when just sitting on the floor. When it’s on the jack (necessary to raise it into position), it’s too tall to be rolled under the car. It’s far too heavy to lift into position underneath the car without the jack.

The solution, which somehow took me about a week to come up with, was to ratchet-strap the transmission to the jack as tightly as possible, roll the whole thing over onto one side, then push it under the car, then turn it right side up again. The transmission and jack together weigh in the neighborhood of 150 lbs, so to reduce the weight, I unbolted the adapter housing and the supporting crossmember from the back, and removed the torque converter from the front.

Even then, it was still pretty heavy, but it was light enough for me to dead-lift it onto the jack and strap it in place:

Just barely, I was able to turn it over and drag/shove it across the floor on its side. The concrete floor has a few more shallow gouges now than it did before. Luckily, everything held together while I slowly righted it onto the jack’s wheels again. The new bolt I got for holding the jack adapter together performed admirably, unlike the old one which appeared to be made of Chinese tin, and that’s being generous.

Next time we'll see the transmission re-installed.