Willow Springs, Spring Fling, MATS 1600 mile road trip

[ntstlgl1970]

Got the overdrive trans on the stand. My buddy dropped off the bellhousing so I was able to get everything bolted up. Worked out pretty well. I sure had to modify a lot of stuff to get this bellhousing to work. Spot face the bolt holes deeper, resize the starter pilot hole (1.000 pilot hole and 1.000 starter nose doesn't work very well), sand a 45 degree angle into the pump opening since part of the casting is .200" thicker than the rest and hits the converter. Oh yeah, the starter pilot hole is off center a little so I have to grind part of the block to make the starter fit.
NICE!
I'm not super impressed with the machine work on this thing out of the box. There is no way you could use it even for it's intended application without major work (after the bellhousing cut is finalized on the case) Anyhow, it's on so maybe I can crank it over and check line pressure tomorrow.

[hemiken]

Good luck Eric, it does look like a great fit.   Those tappet covers look awesome by the way so super smooth ang glossy

[tactransman]

   You are definitely earning this one!  I can't believe that they have not had alot of people calling about fit problems,not everyone is capable of doing all the modifications like you have.  Good Job making it work.

[ntstlgl1970]

Thanks Terry and Ken, wish I could be as thrilled at this point. I was able to get the starter in tonight, wires hooked up so I could crank it over and....

no line pressure

The 727 line pressure came up almost immediately after I got enough fluid in the thing. Not sure what is going on so it will have to come back off and have the pump back out to see if I can tell what is going on. The fluid level in the trans doesn't change when you crank it over for an extended period (with the plugs out) in any gear. The 727 would make about 50psi line pressure using this method. I'm not going to wait and see if it will build pressure once the engine starts, I'll just bite the bullet now. Hopefully it's something simple. Once I figure it out I'll post what I find. Maybe Wednesday.
I'm pretty bummed but I'll get it sorted out.
Almost wish I would have gone with a 5 speed at this point - almost

[hemiken]

  stick with it mate, it will all be worth while in the end buddy..... you'll see.

[Tubbed440]

Love this build!  Keep up the good work man.   You'll get there soon enough. 

[conv340]

You've done a lot of great work with the drive line. I can appreciate and am impressed with the work on the fuel injection and trans. 
Hope you get the hood soon I think fiberglass shops must breath too many of there fumes  I had the same probs with the YO hood. Will NEVER use unlimited body products again It was a nightmare  The second hood I got from http://www.usbodysource.com/ took a while to get but its very nice quality and fit. I've heard good things from AAR ( and they have a cool name!) so hopefully you will end up happy.
I know we have the same issues with letting other people work on our cars. So I'm glad the body guy is doing a good job. Can't wait to see it in paint. I know I'll be a lot happier when mines back home!
 

[ntstlgl1970]

Thanks everybody for the support. Some good news, the hood came in yesterday and it is really nice. There is no comparison between this hood and the year one hood. Even though the hood is just sitting on the car, it's obvious the AAR Fiberglass (www.aarqualityfiberglass.com) one is SO much better. It was worth the wait.

Also I know what's up with the trans now, the bellhousing doesn't seat into the pump opening enough to compress the pump against the gasket and trans casting. So the pump is sucking air. I took the trans off the engine, removed the bellhousing and tightened the bolts for the pump, put the converter back on it and I could get it to pump fluid from the cooler out line turning the converter by hand (that was fun). From what I can tell the OD of the male bevel area on the bellhousing is either too large or the angle of the bevel is too different than the female bevel for the pump opening on the front of the transmission. It locates like this 

bellhousing> >trans

If that makes any sense. It's off just enough to keep the gasket from being compressed when it's all bolted together. I can see the tiniest amount of space if I look closely between the front of the pump and the rear of the bellhousing, maybe .005-.010". So what I'm going to do is make a shim, using the pump gasket as a template and put that between the rear of the bellhousing and the front of the pump. It's not the best solution but it "should" work. (plus I don't have access to a rotary table large enough to change the OD of the tapered section on the bellhousing). I have some thin aluminum (.025") that I can cut with tin snips to get it close and finish it off with the sander. So the assembly will go:

bellhousing - o-rings (for bolt sealing) - shim - pump - gasket - case

I "should" be able to get this hammered out tonight. So there should be some good news later -or else I'm selling this thing and going to live in a van down by the river.

[tactransman]

I have AAR brand flat hood and trunk lid on my car and they get a  from me.

[ntstlgl1970]

It's been a long weekend, had company Saturday and worked on the trans thing more today. I did get the shim and everything cut out Friday night, still didn't work. So I think I am up to 9 times I've had the trans off and the converter or the pump out of it in the last week. I went waaaaaaaay backwards and did some weird stuff to confirm if I had a pump problem or a case/gasket/valve body problem. I mocked up the converter on the flexplate, put the bellhousing on and bolted the pump up to it. Removed the stator support to confirm that I have pump engagement (it was just about perfect). Put that back together in the trans, double checked that I didn't have any bolts bottoming out in the bolt holes (so many changes have been made thought I should double check) That was all good. So after that I dropped the valve body, and cranked the engine over, I have suction and pressure at the case openings to the pump. So that is a good sign. Since the valve body is out I took that apart and double checked all the passages on the inlet side of the circuit, that appears to be good. Was going to put the valve body back in and noticed that the direct drum wasn't seated all the way into the sun shell.  So at some point, who knows when, I got the clutches out of place. Trans came back out again, pulled the pump again, removed the foward and direct clutch, got all that lined up and back together. Didn't have time to put it back on the stand. Seems like I'm not accomplishing much. I can take the trans off the engine stand in about 5 minutes now, so I guess thats something. 
Check out the scary pic of the clearance between the converter and the bellhousing. Kinda funny that JW doesn't mention that you should run a 10" converter with this thing except on a piece of paper that comes in the box. Once I get the engine running so I have an idea of what to order, I'll get the smaller converter and a lot of the clearance issues will be gone.

[hemiken]

Wow Eric, that is messed up close encounters of the converter kind buddy
Hope the 10" converter has more clearance for you.  Post pics when you get that please.

[ntstlgl1970]

My whole thought process for the converter was to use a cheap converter to get it running on the stand, get an idea as to how the engine will run etc. (since last time it was a dual plane with a carb, now it's kinda like a single plane with with injection). I expect it will be down on power a little overall and the torque hopefully will be close to what it was. The converter I want to get is pretty expensive so I don't want to send it back a bunch of times to get it restalled. Anyhow I got everything back together last night and still no line pressure. At this point I'm going to go back to the crank sensor stuff and get that squared away. I'll revisit the transmission a little later. I've been beating myself up over the trans for a couple of weeks. I need some positive stuff to happen.....

[tactransman]

Did you ever check to see if you are pumping fluid out of the front cooler line fitting? Is it not filling the converter? (picking up fluid)

[ntstlgl1970]

Nothing from the cooler fitting. When I pull the converter out there is fluid in it (I did not fill the converter manually). Though that may be because I had up to 10 quarts in the thing and the level of the fluid may have been high enough to partially fill the converter somehow. I'm stumped right now. If I crank over the engine with the valve body out, I can feel suction if I block the suction side of the pump with my thumb and feel pressure when I block the pressure side of the pump as well. Couldn't find anything on the suction side of the valve body that might cause a problem, but who knows...

[tactransman]

You did not change any hard parts in the transmission,right? ( Pump, drums etc.)

This is a non lock up trans right?

You know nothing about this core, like if it was working correctly before you got it,right?

If a non lock up,make sure the pump only has two check balls in the stator (reaction shaft support) and not three balls (it should have two balls and one open hole). you can see them in thru the front seal just inside the inner pump gear.