Now the disassembly of the frame is finally done. Actually it was done few months ago but we didn't have the inspiration to write the post about it. Anyway, here it finally is.
The disassembly process was pretty straightforward and there weren't any big surprises. There was a small mouses nest inside one of the frame rails though :).
First to come off were the rear axle and torque tube assembly. Nothing much there. We don't have any idea what the condition of the rear axle is, so some kind of overhaul will be done, new bearings, axle seals and so on. Then there are also the lever-action shocks, although they seem to have some resistance they will probably be replaced by a pair of modern shocks along with the springs, who knows?
When taking the engine and the transmission off, we noticed that the engine and transmission mounts were all sheared. So basically the engine and the transmission were held on only by gravity and the torque tube.
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| Transmission mounts |
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| Engine mounts |
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Our older son helping with the jack.
If only we had taken the front springs off at this state as he is suggesting :). |
Then we took off the transmission. Fortunately we have the shop manual so we also knew to unscrew the 4 screws between the flex plate and the torque converter in addition to the the screws between the bell housing and the engine. Like already mentioned, the transmission mounts were sheared so when we took the transmission cross member off, it fell to our garage floor. Fortunately we had the transmission and engine already supported by engine crane so no harm done there.
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| Transmission being lifted off |
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| Engine being lifted off |
We also had some difficulties with the detachment of the front springs. The shop manual states that detachment should be done by detaching the outer end of the lower A-arm and then lowering it with the jack. Well that works fine if you have the weight of the car on the jack but we had already disassembled the whole car off the frame. So we had to use coil spring compressors to compress the springs, which wasn't that easy either, because only half of the coils is visible and could be compressed. In the end we finally got the front spring assembly off and the disassembly of the frame done.
