so, I was able to get to my Dad's house on Wed to get some more work done on the car. Instead of putting stuff back on the engine like I probably should have done, I decided to tackle the pesky trans leak which was coming from the gear shaft selector seal (apparently, a common problem). While trying to get the seal out gave me a little bit of grief doing it from above, I ended up having to drop the pan and the valve body to get the seal out from the bottom. When doing this, I was able to find out that the selector shaft was scored, most likely from the hardening up of the rubber seal. Similar to what happens to the harmonic balancer. Unfortunately, they do not make a repair sleeve like they do for the balancers. There is an upgraded seal that is a piece of machined aluminum with a rubber o-ring inside the ring and another one on the exterior of the o-ring. This will hopefully conform to the grove.
Anyway, here are some pics of the trans cross piece which appears to have never been out of the car. The paint on the inside of the cross piece as you can see in the pic is a shiny (gloss for lack of a better term) black. As you can see, there was a ton of grease on it from 44+ years of service.
Here is how the nut that holds the trans mount to the cross brace. It appeared a clear zinc at first, however, once I removed it you can see a little of the factory red zinc left where the grease and oil could not get to.
Here is the same nut restored!
What I was shocked to find was that the trans mount that was in the cross brace, was the original factory installed one. Mopar logo, part number, and even a date code of 7/68 on it. The pics are of how it looks after I restored it. Prior to restoring, it was nothing but covered in grease and grime.
pics of the cleaned up, restored bolts from the cross brace and the two bolts that mount the trans mount up to the transmission housing. Once the grease was removed, the bolts were soaked in Evapo-rust to remove the minimal amount of rust, then they were treated to RPM to prevent any future oxidation.
Brian looking good!! When you showed the hood catch and two bolts I hope you know that should be body color. It was painted bolted on the hood originally.
I'm just trying to go by the evidence that was there. The only conclusion that I could come to was that either the spacer was sat flat with the water pump side being down on something and painted so no paint would have gotten behind it or the only other option was that it would have been bare aluminum. Again, it is hard to say as I am starting to find a lot of weird things with this car. Although with the two other Mopars we own, I shouldn't be so surprised. lol
