Broken wrench, dirt drench - transmission out, really really greasy snout

My father-in-law came over to work on the car today. He brought with him pluck and determination. He also reaped the benfit of the penetrating oil I had sprayed before him. Once we had coffee and got ourselves situated, we went to work. Of course it took him several minutes to understand what I had been talking about regarding the offending transmission bolts. Those 2 holding the transmission are really hard to see if you aren't looking for them. Even more so when you consider the distraction caused by the nine other bolts which are right in front of you.

He immediately pointed out that we needed more room to crank. So we raised the car another 2 or 3 inches. In the front, I am using 2 jack stands I bought years ago that are pretty good, but we are 1 notch down from as high as they will go. In the back I am using 2 jack stands that came with the car. They were probably made before I was born and are 3-legged. While 3-legged is a good way to frame a metaphor about balanced expectations or to make a stool that isn't wobbly, it is a janky way to hold up 1000 lbs of steel. I need to replace them with some 4 legged jobbies. Probably need to get 4 more of those so I can get some additional support on the sides.

After we lifted it we rolled under there with a breaker bar. One quick yank and those bolts gave up their hold and we turned them out. Boring really.

Next came the 3 bolts on each side holding the cross member to the frame. These are all "through" bolts - meaning there is a bolt and a nut and you need to secure the bolt head to be able to turn the nut or else it just spins. Fortunately I had a 3/4" combination wrench to use. Because of the rust, we used the cheater bar on the ratchet and that limited the range of turning - probably a 1/16 of a rotation. They took forever to come off - and got hot as we turned them. We would pause to squirt some more oil on them, but none of them came out easily. 

Somewhere in there we flipped from the closed box to the open end because it sat more flush to the frame. This orientation was less prone to falling off. Unfortunately, the torque on the bolt was more than my no-name cheapo 3/4" combo wrench could handle. I was wearing gloves and eye protection, but it was still exciting when the wrench gave up and died. I collected its parts, flipped it back the other way, and we went back to wrenching. The box end still works.

I had disconnected the emergency brake cable from the rear brakes weeks ago but didn't notice until today that front half of the cable passed through the cross member. We tried to loosen it but it was seriously rusted. So - after I checked if there was a replacement that could be bought - we cut the cable with a hacksaw.

We jacked up transmission + engine combination and inserted a jackstand under the bell housing. Then we pounded on the cross member with a hammer and used a screw driver as a wedge until the piece dropped off. Of course pounding with a hammer produced (a) more moments of reflection on the quality of my jack stand stilts and (b) copious amounts of rust and road crud raining down out of the cross member onto the hammer man. A bit of existential terror combined with a shower of dirt led me to hum "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head". 

Once we got the cross member out, we did a dance to figure out the best way to get the four bolts off front of the transmission that connected it to the bell housing. This was mostly about figuring out which length of extension was enough to reach the bolts from some place where we could actually turn a ratchet. Really we talked about it and fidgeted around about twice as long as it actually took to remove them. I used my magnetic grabber to catch the top bolts from the engine bay side - otherwise they would have fallen and rolled who knows where.

With those 4 bolts out, it was just a matter of wiggling the jack the transmission was resting on backwards and down until the spindled snout dropped out of the back of clutch plate. Probably about 2 inches rearward for it to disengage from the clutch and another 2 inches before it was clear of the bell housing. Once it is free of the clutch you can start to lower it much more liberally.

My goodness is there a lot of good quality grease on the base of that snout. Probably half an inch thick. I stuck my hand in it at least twice as wrestled that 150lb rust covered temaki (hand roll sushi) to its new home on that block of wood.

Once the transmission was out I noticed that wad of insulation you can see on the right side of the tunnel. At first I thought I was looking at a rodent carcass. I was scared to touch it because there is not much that is less cool than reaching for a wad of dirty insulation and discovering it is actually a grease embalmed rat. Turns out it was insulation jammed in a design feature - a hole for a floor shifter if that was what the transmission needed. Cool deal. I have more options.

In other news, I drained the engine oil and removed the oil filter. It had a lot of very black oil in there but I think it had been filled with this graphite stuff that was popular in the 70's ~ 80's. It didn't look or smell bad, had some viscosity in it and didn't seem to have gas or water in it. And it all landed in my drain pan without overflowing.

Last thing (besides sweeping up a ton of crud) was we removed the bracket that provided a pivot for the shift/clutch interlock lever that was on the engine. That arm is just dangling under there now. 

There is nothing left except two 2-bolt engine mounts holding the motor in the car.