Very cool.
In reply to SV reX :
Here's some I took that day in downtown Atlanta. I'll save the cute couple pics for FB.
I spent the weekend living in my El Camino at Road Atlanta to watch Petit LeMans. We had quite an eclectic mix of camping rigs, even by Petit standards. It rained a lot on Friday but I slept nice and dry, despite the leaking hatch hinge. Luckily my truck is a real truck with a 6-1/2' bed (none of this 5ft nonsense they sell these days), just long enough to keep my feet away from the water.
My El Camino became Cafe El Campino while my best friend's rig became Bar Bronco. It was a good time!
Honestly a little overloaded but it worked for an hour drive up to the mountains. Pumped the air shocks way up. Love the low tailgate height for ramps.
For the past few months I've been dealing with a starter grinding issue. It's gotten worse to the point where sometimes it won't engage the ring gear at all, just spin the starter. I've gotten around this by keeping a breaker bar under the seat so I can bar the engine over a couple degrees and it will start again. I think it all started about a year ago, when I noticed the bellhousing bolts had backed off and there was a 1/4" gap on one side to the engine! Tightening those up helped immensely at the time, but it keeps getting worse and I kept putting it off due to the garage build and Camry swap. My therory is the damage was done to the flexplate ring gear when from tooth misalignment and the bad spot just grew over time. I finally dedicated a weekend to fixing it.
Of course I'm still building my shop, so hopefully this is my last trans drop on my back.
I actually couldn't drop the trans all the way due to the long-tube headers, but I got it into a spot where I could swap the flexplates.
Sure enough, there's plenty of damage! These are two different locations.
I confirmed the crank bolt pattern and overall diameter, and put it all back together. But of course I forgot to check torque converter bolt pattern.
Which means I got to the whole job over again, on my back, on the floor!
I decided to just slot the holes instead of waiting on the wrong part to ship again (thanks a lot, Rockauto!)
And after probably 10 hours total, I got it all back together and it starts smoothly again! Next time I have to drop a trans, I better have a lift installed because I'm getting too old for this E36 M3!
You'll need to log in to post.