Hi everyone,
I'm brand new here. Please don't shoot me, I'm mainly a Mopar guy, but I love all muscle cars from the 60's and 70's. I'm resotring a 68 Dodge Coronet R/T. My dad worked for Dodge in the late 60's and early 70's so that's where it comes from. However I'm also involved in a project that I'm sure you'll consider noble. A friend of mine bought a 69 Z28 that had been hacked up pretty badly to make it a drag racer. It was tubbed in a homemade sort of way, the original engine and tranny are gone, it was sprayed on the inside with a rubberized coating, and numerous other atrocities. So we're trying to bring it back to pretty close to original condition.

Last weekend we pulled the motor and tranny. It's a 66 or 67 327 block with a six speed transmission that I think my friend said was a Borg-Warner. The problem is that we can't get them apart. I've had other cars that I'm pretty sure (it been awhile since I've worked on cars) that I've done this with and I thought I'd separated it between the bell housing and the tranny. It appears that in this case though that the bolt that serves as the pivot point for the clutch lever is actually bolted to the tranny. We can't shift the fork over enough to get it off the bushing (is that called the pilot bushing?) that it wraps around to release the clutch. So the housing separates from the tranny about 1/2 inch but not far enough to get a wrench into. We tried to break it between the engine and bell housing but that didn't seem to want to come apart either and we didn't want to force it.

We feel kinda stupid that we can't get them apart, we're fairly mechanically inclined but neither of us has worked on these cars in 20 years or so, so we're a little rusty. Anyone know if we're just going about this wrong?

Thanks for any help you can give me,
Darrell

 

I have not pulled many engines but I pulled my 350 this spring. I have a auto turbo 350 which when I unbolted it, slid out. You might have to disengage the clutch or somehting like that. Good luck

Matt

And there is nothing wrong with mopars. I am a big fan but I cant afford one. GOod for you.

 

Thanks Matt. My Coronet is an auto too, and it was simple as well. The manual is a different animal. Good news though, we got it apart today. Had to rotate the tranny 90 degrees to the engine and we were able to get a wrench on the clutch lever pivot bolt. After they were apart we noticed that the way the lever, fulcrum and bolt were designed, we should have just been able to pull the lever out enough for the fork end to clear the tranny input shaft. So apparently it was binding somehow. Should go back together much easier now that we know how it works. Live and learn.