This weekend I decided to get back on the CUCV project I started a while back.
The problem started about a year ago when my driveline vibration got drastically worse all of a sudden one day. Come to find out, the bolts holding the transmission to the engine had fallen out. I limped it to Lowes and got 6 new bolts, only to find out 3 of the bolts had sheared off in the block when the others loosened up and fell out. I put 3 bolts in and was on the road for a while till the flywheel started making lots of noise. I knew the 3 bolts holding everything together were under a lot of stress so I parked it.
Fast forward about 6 months or so. I decided to pull the engine because I really didn't want to lay under the truck to pull the trans and Xfer case then drill out bolts laying on my back. Plus, the rear main was leaking and I had another bolt broken off where the starter support bracket bolts to the engine. That bolt was very difficult to get to from underneath, already tried that when I had it on a lift. Just couldn't get a good angle on it. Anyway, I disconnected most of the stuff to pull the engine but got busy with work and other stuff and the truck was on the back burner again.
Fast forward another couple months. I finally decided that the truck needed to be on the road and with the warm weather I just jumped right in there. I didn't have help to remove the hood, so I took the wipers and cowling off, disconnected the hood spring hinges and raised the hood up all the way to the windshield. I learned that trick on Mercedes 450SL's, works great. I only forgot to disconnect 2 things but I noticed them before any damage was done. Engine came out pretty smoothly, but it is heavy and the factory lifting brackets were tweaking but held up. That was yesterdays portion.
Today I started on the broken bolts. I borrowed some reverse cut drill bits from another member and started with a small bit on each bolt then a larger bit. All three broken pieces spun right out when the bit got a good bite. Wow, was I lucky. Now on to the exhaust pipe flange stud that broke while taking things apart. I sprayed it down with penetrating oil and went inside to eat lunch. When I came back out, I grabbed it tightly with vise-grips and the stud came right out. Dang man, I must be living right. Not so fast, on to the last broken bolt for the starter support bracket. When I originally tried to fix it, a friend of mine broke an easy out off in the hole he drilled in the broken bolt. I knew I had to grind that out so I had bought some die grinder carbide burs that also had cutting burs on the end, not just the sides like most you see. I searched long and hard for them a while back and paid dearly for them too. I started with the 1/4in diameter and made short order of what was left of the bolt and the broken easy out. I then used the larger bur and carefully made a nice straight hole as far in as I could. I then got a 12mm 1.75 metric tap and tapped new threads in the hole. The original bolt was no where near that big but I had to go larger because the hole got so buggered up. The hole is only about a 1/2in deep so I had to make a short bolt. I ran a die onto the bolt, cut it off to the right length then used the die to clean the threads up. I enlarged the hole in the support bracket and BAM....DONE. All of these repairs happened with no cussing, no thrown tools, no busted knuckles, sweet, what a lucky day.
Then to top the Saint Patrick's Day off, I found 2 four leaf clovers in just a matter of a couple minutes looking. How cool is that.
Now, next weekends project is the rear main seal, new harmonic balancer (just because they are prone to problems), new engine mounts and a new flywheel. The flywheel/torque converter mounting holes got elongated due to the transmission moving all over the place. All in all, it was a good weekend.