From: Adam Birnbaum [adamb777@worldnet.att.net]
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2000 2:55 PM
To: 928
Subject: [928] Re: parking brake

Tony wrote:

> Any pointers for the rear bell housing/ converter/ converter bearing 
> removal?

There are three rubber plugs on the rear converter housing that give access
to the rear flex plate mounting bolts. These need to be removed before the
converter cover will come off the transaxle.  This is because the rear flex
plate is pressed into the cover. (This will make more sense when you get it
apart)   I loosened these bolts while the tranny was still in the car and
the drive shaft still in the hub, that way the converter wouldn't be
turning as I was trying to loosen the bolts.  Since your tranny is out of
the car, you may be able to run a screw driver or something through the
hole in the input shaft (where the pinch bolt goes) to keep the flex plate
from turning as you loosen the bolts.  They aren't torqued down very tight,
so you won't need much resistance.  There are six bolts in all.

Once these bolts are out, you can unbolt the allen bolts around the
perimeter of the cover.  Once undone, the converter cover should come off
the front of the transaxle with the rear flex plate inside.  I believe I
had to use a rubber mallet to coax it off.

From here, I took the converter housing with the flex plate mounted in it,
my new converter bearings, and copies of the appropriate pages out of the
repair manuals
(exploded view and procedure) to the local machine shop and let them do the
work.
Louie Ott's son, Steven, stated that he had no problems putting the
converter housing from his "S" model ('84?) in the oven pursuant to the
manual procedures and the converter bearings came right out.  The cost was
pretty nominal to have the new ones pressed in, so I left it to the
professionals.

The manual talks about measuring the distance from the face of the
converter and the outer edge of the tranny housing, in effect measuring how
deep the converter sits in the tranny.  I measured this, and then lifted
the converter slightly out.  I did not take it out all the way, only lifted
maybe one half on inch.  I seem to recall from my highschool power
mechanics days that removing the converter is a big no-no and basically
requires replacing the main seal which I wasn't planning on doing.  I
pressed the converter back down, measured again, turned the converter to
get it to seat, and measured once again.  I did this a few times and
determined there were three "detentes" or positions where the converter
would rest.  One was "out", one was partially seated, and one was fully
seated.  At fully seated, the measurement was always consistent, whether
the tranny was standing upright, or horizontal.  I was concerned about this
initially because the manual shows the measurement taken with the transaxle
on end, converter facing up.  This would seem to indicate that the
converter cover would have to be torqued down with the tranny standing
upright, to be sure that it was fully seated.

In my situation with the rear flex plate collar not taking in the drive
shaft, I had to torque the converter cover on with the tranny horizontal. 
Since the converter depth measurement was the same in the fully seated
position, regardless of the transaxle orientation, it doesn't appear to be
an issue.  I just had to make sure the converter was fully seated before I
bolted the tranny up to the already mounted converter cover.

Sounds like things are progressing nicely Tony, glad to see you got the
E-brake cable out.  I discovered that the sleeve came out from pure
frustration.  I, too, was seriously eyeing my wire cutting dykes, and as a
last ditch effort gave a hard yank on the cable from under the car, and saw
the sleeve move out just a hair. Grabbed the channel locks and out it came!

-Adam Birnbaum