To the left or to the right? Trans conversion problem!

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Joined
Oct 10, 2007
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Location
Arlington, VA
I'm replacing the original 3-sp trans in my '73 FJ with a 4-sp trans that I believe came out of a '77 FJ. I can't get this thing to bolt up and I'm ready to throw in the towel. I got the trans to slide almost all the way in but a slight gap still existed beween the trans and bellhousing. Tried pulling it together by tightening down the four trans bolts and that was requiriing way too much torque. Gave up on that before I broke something. Tried a lot of the tricks I've read on the forum with no luck (such as pushing in clutch pedal and cleaned up input shaft with emery cloth.) Clutch disc and PP are aligned via an alignment tool. Need help on this one!!! One thing I'm uncetain about is if my clutch parts will work with this trans or not...I've got a brand new clutch disc, PP, throwout bearing, and pilot bearing for the early (3-finger style clutch.) Therefore, needed to use the older clutch fork. Here's the problem: the 4-sp clutch fork was on the right side of trans, but my slave cylinder was on the left side. Didn't look to be a problem as the 4-sp has an opening on each side. However, given the problems I'm having, I just don't know. Anyone have this problem?
 
That last slight sticking may be due to the dowel pins being rusty. One time I had a difficult install because a dowel was stuck in the BH (as it should be) and a dowel pin had decided to stick in the front of the transmission (from a donor vehicle), so it went together pretty well, but the last 3/8" was a bitch, as the extra dowel pin was pushed all the way through the hole in the BH. Didn't notice the problem until years later when the truck was back for other work, and the extra dowel was found inside the BH.
 
How much of a gap? If it is 3/4 of an inch, the nose of the tranny isn't entering the pilot bearing. Make sure that the tranny is lined up square with the bellhousing and if necessary, step on the clutch to release it. This is hard to do if you don't have a tranny jack or supporting the tranny somehow.
 

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