I'm back from vacation, which means that my real vacation can resume. Today, I drove over to the barn to take care of that nagging transmission rebuild.
Since Coolerman does not have a wonderful transmission rebuild write-up, my initial plan was to make one. I charged my camera and packed a cooler full of cold water, then I set out for the barn. Truth be told, if I had documented the build in real time, it would have been a lesson in how not to rebuild the 3 speed transmission. I had to disassemble a few parts a few times, because I forgot to install parts or because I misread the FSM and installed parts incorrectly.
This means that I have pictures from the first half of the build, but I got to a point where I had to keep my hands too dirty for the camera and focus all my efforts to assembling the trans correctly. I will give you guys what I have and we'll see how it turns out.
I disassembled the transmission according to the FSM. I did not take any pictures at all. This will only be a record of the assembly.
1. Before touching any parts, Print the exploded diagram out and put it on the wall above your work table. This is as close to surgery as you can do on a vehicle, so make sure you have a clean enough work environment. Sweep off those metal shavings from the band saw and grinder before spreading out your parts.
2. Start by assembling the reverse idler gear. It has two rows of
loose needle rollers that need to be placed inside the gear. A small spacer/washer goes between the two rows. I assembled with non-moly axle grease to keep all the little rollers in place. The FSM tells you that you need 56 rollers.
TIP: separate your rollers into groups of 28. This helps you keep track of how many rollers to put in each side of the gear.
The last roller for each row should almost feel like a piece of a puzzle snapping in place.
Place the thrust washers on either side of the gear. I used grease to hold them in place. Slide it into place in the transmission case. There is such a thing as backwards, so make sure the ramped side of the gear teeth are facing into the transmission cavity.
Insert the new reverse idler gear shaft that came in the rebuild kit. Tapered end goes in first. Make sure that the groove for the woodruff key is going to fit in place after everything is seated.
3. Get out the counter gear, 96 new rollers, new counter gear shaft, 4 bearing spacer washers, one spacer sleeve, 1 woodruff key, and all thrust washers that you took out. In my case there were 3 thrust washers.
Separate the 96 rollers into 4 small bowls of 24 each so you can keep up with what goes where.
Use plenty of grease to hold everything in place, and install 1 row of 24 rollers into one end of the counter gear. Inspect carefully to make sure everything looks appropriate, then use one bearing spacer/washer to slide the bearings to the appropriate depth in the counter gear. Use a lot of grease to install the second row of bearings, then the second bearing spacer/washer.
Carefully turn the counter gear over so that the first 48 bearing rollers do not fall out. At this point you are glad that you used the stickiest grease you could find.
Carefully slide the spacer tube into the counter gear and begin installing the other two rows of rollers in a similar fashion to the first side.
Note: unlike the reverse idler gear, the spacer/washer is between the rollers and the thrust washer.
