Next came the bell housing & that one in the pics is a Lakewood Scattershield type that weighs almost as much as the flywheel. But, the worst part about putting it on is the fact that my frame is not the usual 19" width for T's, it's 18 3/8's" due to the round chromoly frame tubing I guess. That makes it necessary to do a 'funny little twist' as the bolt hole ears/starter housing bubble on R. side have to clear the inside frame rails. Then it seemed like a mile to push that housing up & over the flywheel & locate the 12 o'clock dowel pin. I finally got all that done in time to remember a saying by my friend Dan Evans who owned Uncle Daniel's Old Car Factory in Dallas during the 1980's. When he used to hit difficult bumps in the road of building rods he would always tell me; "Fun with old cars!"
So, this takes everything back to Saturday morning a week ago. Now it was time to see if I could stab this in by myself. After all, I was able to do it easily w/my old Borg-Warner T-10. But, it was a 10 spline input & the Tremec is a 26 spline input which I suspected might be more challenging; I didn't realize how correct my suspicion was until I started. One of my friends came over after he got off work at the local NAPA store & we worked for over an hour w/no success. We got it to within an inch of going in but, no further.
I finally called my brother Monday evening & he was able to come over and see what he might suggest since he's done a lot more of these. That was the best thing I did because we finally got it in within an hour. The following pics were taken yesterday morning.
I still had to cut some of the bottom bolt holes off for clearance over the back cross piece. The upward curved cutout is where I've cut out some. I still have more to go because that is resting on the cross piece which is welded into the K member. That's got to have a lot of clearance because of the flex in this frame. I'll start on that tomorrow. It's gonna be fun since there's not much room for getting die grinders w/cut off wheels in those small areas.
