Thread: Followed Me Home, '33 Build

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Originally Posted by rumrumm

If you have a good interior guy, he can make new foam to replace any of the foam that is bad. I seriously considered Fiero seats when I was planning my '32, but I opted for a bench.

Actually found a place that makes seven or eight different designs for Fiero seats, and his package includes a full array of parts, pieces and instruction to bring the foam back from the dead. http://mrmikes.com/ Have not ordered yet, but leaning towards this over custom for twice the cost. I think (hope) I can follow DVD instructions.

Saturday bolted up the flywheel and got it torqued, and moved on checking the bellhousing register bore for alignment. The check showed us to be within 0.0005 of the allowable 0.010 total runout, so we elected to move on to the clutch. Having been told that my flywheel was tapped for both metric and SAE I had metric bolts with dowels. Flywheel is not tapped metric, but has three sets of spaced holes, all SAE - 2 sets 5/16x16, one set 3/8x18 (Mike Forte says this means my flywheel is Chinese, but I am waiting for verification from Scott Sehr. Bottom line, it is balanced to my engine, so it is what it is...) Our overall goal for the day was to get the engine & tranny together for a first fit into the chassis, so we decided to just stab the tranny without the clutch/pressure plate and do them later. After fighting it for 15 minutes we took the bellhousing off (again), set it up on blocks for floor clearance to the tranny pilot shaft, and set the TKO in place to be sure that they would couple up at the register hole. No joy - the tranny would not come close to dropping into place. Going back to our register check, we realized that the readings showed that the hole was oval about 0.011, and a quick caliper check seemed to show an interference fit. Some internet action found a forum post (Mustangs) about a bad run of TREMEC bellhousings this Fall, but there was only one mention of it. Gave up the fight and son Ryan snapped a shot that I think is a keeper.

Talked to Mike Forte Monday morning, and while he had never seen any problem like this he agreed that our approach was right, and that it pointed to a bellhousing problem. Mike put a new bellhousing, personally checked for register bore fit on a shop TKO, in a box to me Monday afternoon - great service (Thanks, Mike!) Hopefully the new bellhousing is the key to first fit of the power train in the chassis. Hoped it would be here this week, but UPS says 12/21 predicted. :-( Guess it is the Christmas rush....