Posting here on 140 Bricks has definitely fallen off of late, but work on the two 140s in my stable has not. Bringing things up to date, I have finished one of the door panels for the 142 and just have the fitting and covering to do on the passenger side. While working on the doors, I lubed all the latch and lock mechanisms and replaced all the window channel seals and door seals, installed new wing window glass (the old ones had been very messily glued in), and put in some IPD wing window locks. I replaced the blown-out trunk shocks---you can't find new ones (except maybe through a dealer for a mint), so I just brought my old ones down to AutoZone and the guy obligingly went to the back and found some that would work---score! Tackling the neglected trunk, I built a wooden floor piece for the right side of the trunk, a new Masonite center section, and carpeted them both, as well as the driver's side piece, which was in good shape. The trunk looks great now! I also moved the battery back there and installed a quick-disconnect switch under the driver's seat; Feeling ambitious, I modified the brakes to function without the booster, (which was leaking badly), and bought some differential seals from IPD, which I have yet to install. It also has all new brakes, a new front brake line (to replace a slightly leaking one), and new Falken tires on the 10-spoke Sirius wheels I bought recently. I'll put up more pictures of all the finished work next post, but here are a couple for now:
But we aren't finished yet! The '72 wagon was not content to let her sister get all the attention, especially since she was the one hauling our butts around every day while F.V. sat in the garage primping. No, the 145 has been losing third gear for a while now, and I have been getting more and more uncomfortable with the thought of her transmission giving out and some very inconvenient time. Driving up Denison Grade in the morning in third sounded like dragging a bag of bolts over rusty steel grating during a mild shale avalanche. It didn't have a lot of time left. I looked into rebuilding it, but parts are very expensive, and I couldn't afford the transmission shop price anyway. Ordering the parts and doing all the work myself, that still takes a lot of time and money...I needed options. By a stroke of good fortune, I found a fully rebuilt M40 on ebay, and the owner happened to be in LA. A few emails later he met me at 6 Flags and I drove home with a new tranny, overdrive (also rebuilt), bellhousing, release fork, and new clutch kit for $225. (Basically, I stole it from him). The next night, Friday, I did a record-breaking transmission swap---under 4 hours from jacking it up to letting it down, all by myself too; and it runs awesome now. All quiet and crisp the way a transmission should be. I have rarely had a job that big go so smoothly. And what was the secret? A little bit of good luck, a large dose of simple car with sensible design, and an experiment with a risky method: separating the transmission at the bellhousing and leaving the starter, clutch, and cable bolted to the engine. The problem one usually runs into doing it this way is that the transmission input shaft can very easily push the clutch disc off-center, making it impossible to put it back together without taking everything off after all. Well, either I was really lucky, or on the 1-to-Awesome scale I'm Super-Great, because it worked! Finally, I installed some new window channel rubber in the rear doors from leftover scraps from the 142 job so the windows would stop rattling when you roll them down. Busy times. I wish I had more photos of everything, but sometimes you just forget.
