Upon resumption of work, I made note of the fact that
the driver's side header was slightly encroaching on
the space that the C6 transmission would need to be raised
up into. If the passenger side header did the same, it might
be rather difficult to stab the tranny with both headers attached.
So I decided that it was now time to
attach the transmission.
As usual, inserting the torque converter
into the front pump
and lining up the splines and flats
brought sweat to my brow
and curses to my lips (if you've ever
had to do it before,
you know what I mean). Finally, I got
the torque converter
in and wheeled the tranny over to the
car.
After lifting the transmission into
position, I lined up the torque
converter studs with the flywheel holes.
Everything looked
dead center and ready to stab.
Looked good to me. So did the block
dowels. So I finger
tightened the tranny bolts and proceeded
to try to mate
the transmission to the engine.
After numerous attempts at pushing them
together (to no avail)
I should have realized that
something was rotten in Denmark.
Should have, but didn't;
therefore I did a no-no: I attempted to
pull them together by gently tightening
the bell housing bolts.
When this didn't work, I should have
stopped right there and
dropped the tranny to do some of that
deductive reasoning
that Sherlock Holmes was always chattering
about; should have
but didn't. Instead, I took
the Fred Flintstone approach and
shook the hell out of the transmission
by the tail shaft.
All to no avail.
By this time the sun was setting and
the light was fading, so I
admitted defeat and vowed to return
the next day.
When I got there the next day, I decided
to take the thinking man's
approach (for a change of pace) and
dropped the tranny down.
As I was watching the C6 arc through
its slow descent atop the
floor jack, I was greeted with the
horrifying glint of sunlight passing
through the lovely new crack in the
aluminum transmission case.
I dun broke my tranny case. Way to go Flintstone!
So I did a little postmortem analysis...
The torque converter had a knob-like
protrusion front and center;
I noticed it before, but it looked
like it would fit into the pocket machined
into the back of the crankshaft. Besides,
that's the one Gil's transmission
gave me to replace the old converter;
I assumed that it was the right one.
Here's how it looked laying on the ground:
I tried to mount the torque converter on the flywheel all by itself:
The knob was too long, so the studs
couldn't poke through the
flywheel. Therefore, I broke the housing
because Gil's gave me the
wrong converter. So I called Gil's,
and they hooked me up with their
aluminum-transmission-case-welding
dude. I had to pay for the
welding, but they gave me a new converter
at no charge.
So, $50 and a few days later, I was back in business.