After sitting in the yard for eight months, the blue Colt has finally graced the lab floor!
There was no transmission in the car when I got bought it. The guy I bought it from said the tranny was crapping out on him. He pulled it and had it tore down for rebuilding, but it was going to cost more than he was willing to pay, so no transmission returned.
Originally, this car was equipped with a cable-clutch 4-speed transaxle. I'm not sure what the specs on that were as far as gear ratios and final drives and whatnot, but I'd like to figure those out. I'm sure if I drove this on the highway with the 4-speed, I'd be turning 5krpm; but I don't have a tachometer anyway, so I wouldn't know anyway.
On our last trip to Parts Galore (a great you-pull-it yard in the ghetto in Detroit), Bill and I found a transmission that I hoped would work. It's a cable-clutch 5-speed that was harvested from a 4th gen Colt. The mileage on the odometer read some 250,000 miles. When we dropped the tranny from the car, the gear oil was relatively fresh. When we split it from the block and started taking stuff apart, I observed that the pressure plate, clutch disc, and flywheel all looked very fresh as well. I did not do any preliminary homework on compatability before I bought the gearbox and I was unsuccessful at finding much information after it was purchased. I decided to just go for it and see what happens.
Here's the "new" gearbox in the lab. I did notice that the bellhousing had that junkyard-spec yellow paint marker serial number on it. Hopefully it has less than a quarter-million miles on it; but moreso, I just hope it works.
Curt came out to lend a hand last night.
Everything went together pretty smoothly. As with most FWD tranny installs, the input shaft didn't slide right into the crank, so that took some finagling, but we finally got it. Here's a list of the critical parts I used from which model.
3G shift linkages and bracket
3G upper tranny mount to frame
4G upper tranny mount bracket
Remove the 4G bellhousing mounts
3G driveaxles, starter, flywheel, pressure plate, and clutch
The reverse plug on the 4G tranny fits the 3G harness
The 4G tranny levers for the gears and clutch fit the 3G cables
I haven't been able to hook up the speed sensor because when we pulled the transaxle, we broke the plastic input for the speedometer cable. I'm going to have to find a new one of those.
To complete this phase of the project, I need to replace the front brake pads and rotors, top off the gear oil, and fire it up. I'm just going to use the battery from the DSM.
Hopefully it will be running when I update next time.