So you think you want to open up your tranny......

[douglas vincent]

But in reality, you opened up a can of swearing, child beating, out of date seafood, bloody knuckle, greasy, tranny fluid smelling worms!

If you think its going to safe time, it might. But OH MY GOD, what a bitch if you have never done it before and have no instructions, manuals or anything.

So obviously, thats what I did.

With a shattered 2nd gear and a shattered main shaft, and as I am an automotive cheapskate are heart, and WCSSS7 coming up in less than 2 weeks, I needed to get the wagon up and running again. So I ran out 50-60 miles and picked up a shattered case tranny for $100 to get the guts out of.

I started the whole project on Saturday. By shifting into 2nd. Blowing out 2nd gear. 100 miles from home. Pulled the motor out a few hours later hoping it was something wrong with the clutch. Nope. Pulled the tranny out on Sunday. Drove home in a borrowed Forester.

Opened up the tranny on Monday. Shattered 2nd gear and shattered mainshaft. Tuesday rolls around and guess what? Subaru does not stock in the USA 2nd gear. So I buy a shattered tranny for $100 that night (plus 3 hours of driving, 10 gallons of gas and some cranky kids)

Today I opened up the donor tranny. I actually get lucky. The internals are in decent shape. So now I attempt to swap shafts. Everything seems to line up. But it turns out I missed the fact that there are pins for the front bearings to lock to. So I press one pin OUT THE SIDE OF THE CASE, cracking the case there so now I will have a small leak down the road. The second pin (for the pinior shaft bearing) gets pressed way down and I have to drill, and pound and drill and pound and about 20 minutes of swearing, to get the pin out. Its actually about 4 hours later I get it out and working again.

I also break off a small piece of aluminium case which I hope is not important, find a spring for which I can find no home, and get poisened by soaking my hands in WD-40 and tranny fluid for 10 hours.

I gave up and had to come home at 6 pm or so. Then went back tonight at 9:30 or so. I WAS GOING TO BEAT THIS BITCH!!!! Figured out the pin problem. Figured out the shim promlem. Got it all together at about 11:30. It then took 2-3 hours to get the fucking rear differential on. Christ. Once I figured out I need to remove the dowell pins, it took 10 minutes. But it took me 2-3 hours to figure that out. Doh!

So now, its all back together and I just have to shlep it back to Lincoln city and install it and the motor. THAT will be a piece of cake.

I just hope I put that damn tranny back together correctly.

[Legacy777]

Yeah, tranny's aren't exactly too fun to be taking apart. I opted not to rebuild mine when I got it, and had someone else do it. If I blow a gear later down the line, I'll probably take it apart myself since I shouldn't be under any time constraints.

[LaureltheQueen]

i'm avoiding transmission work like the plague

[Matt Monson]

Not to come down too harshly on you, but what the hell were you thinking rebuilding a tranny without a manual? Did you measure pre-load and lash on the front diff before removing anything? If you didn't there is at least a 50% chance that it is going to bind up immediately upon installation!

Trannies are the most complex piece on our cars and not to be taken lightly (like an engine can be). I have a manual if you need one. I will be doing Steve's old '98 RS tranny sometime in the next month. I will try and document it for people who may want to dive into this sort of thing in the future...

[dzx]

I didn't have that many problems pulling my 98 RS tranny apart, the only problem was It took me a while to figure out where an interlock pin went. Now thinking of pulling an automatic apart makes me shudder.

http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/6242/25rs9fw.jpg

[douglas vincent]

I was thinking I don't have a tranny! Hard to get around without one. And I wasnt rebuilding, so I really wasnt pulling anthing apart. The problem with the shims was simply conquered by reusing the original shims with the new pinion shaft.