So I am doing final fluid fills and checks before starting my engine with it's new MT-647 transmission (yes, I haven't finished, no, I haven't given up). A surprising amount of time has been spent re-doing electrical work, adding some control switches, redoing a lot of plumbing and getting the trans cooler all hooked up. A day was wasted troubleshooting why my new neutral relay didn't seem to work. In the end it turned out my bus was wired differently from the schematic from new, two terminal connections in the start switch wiring were reversed, so I wasted hours figuring that out. At the end of the day I had forgotten to wire a new ground for the start relay. Dumb and dumber...
So I am hanging out in the rear axle bay figuring out how I am going to get a torque wrench on the U-joint strap bolts and I just happen to decide to check if I have clearance to pull the pan for an internal filter change down the road (assuming I put the required mileage on in my lifetime). I see that in pushing the engine into the bay, I got it place about 1/16" too far in, and the pan is touching the cross-member (which I left in place because I think it's critical to the strength of the engine cradle/bay). So now I have to undo everything, jack the bus up again, rebuild my engine lift cradle on the pallet jack and try to winch out the engine by 1/16" to 1/8". Harder than it sounds because the engine doesn't lift exactly square to the rails, and I only have 1/16" of clearance to the top of the air intake on the blower. PITA, but if this is the worst thing I have to fix, I am going to be pretty happy at the end of the day.
Couldn't you just wack the pan with a big hammer to dent it enough to clear the cross member? Or grind off enough off of the cross member to gain clearance? Or do nothing for now?
JC
Quote from: lostagain on August 30, 2017, 08:08:21 AMCouldn't you just wack the pan with a big hammer to dent it enough to clear the cross member? Or grind off enough off of the cross member to gain clearance? Or do nothing for now?
JC
I like how this guy thinks. I do like this guy does!!!
I think that I mentioned somewhere along the way that we cut the cross member and modified it to just bolt back in. This was done to make the pan removable, but it turned out that it also allowed the transmission to be removed without removing the engine. I really think that it is worth doing.
If it was a used pan, I probably would just hit it. But it's brand new... at least it has new paint on it, anyway... :o At the end of the day, it took about 20 minutes. I took a lunch break, thought about it for a while, and found my 4' wrecking bar (the kind that's about 1 1/4" square forged heat-treated steel and weighs too much to actually use as a wrecking bar for more than 10 minutes). Loosened off all the U-bolts, looped a chain around the engine cradle, got some leverage against the frame and the engine moved actually very easily. It moved on my test tug, I didn't have to actually lean on the bar at all. I had 1/16" of clearance with it loose, lost about half that when I tightened it all down again, so tomorrow I'll do it again. Like I said, being a bit of a structure nerd ( used to build/design/modify race cars so studied structure and strength) I truly believe that cross member is critical to strength, so I was only going to remove it if I really really needed to. With that said, I have no objections to making a dent in it if I need to!