I am working on my first 3rd gen car and made a rather easy mistake, but one which hopefully wont haunt me...

on the torque arm mount on the transmission itself there is a rubber mount which is part of a 2 piece metal clamshell. the torque arm is sandwiched inside this. The bottom of this mount is held together by a keyed section and the top is held on by 2 bolts.

My problem.. one bolt runs through the transmission and is about 5" long.. and needs to be put in the trans before it is put in the car...
the other is a small bolt and threads into the mount itself... obviously, I discovered the longer bolt after putting the engine/trans into the car...

since the torque arm isnt touching the bolts and they simply hold the clamshell together, could i get by without the long bolt
or do i need to spend an extra 2 days of work for one bolt? I hate cutting corners, but this would be a huge PITA...


thanks for any input

 

With the amount of stress that the torque arm is under, with both braking and acceleration forces, I would say it is best to keep all the fasteners. Especially with the trans. case being aluminum, I would want the load spread among as many threads as possible. You dont want to have to drop the trans. in a few months to drill and tap new threads because the torque arm ripped its mounting bolt out.

Good luck,
Max

 

I'm not 100% sure but you might be able to just pull the driveshaft from the rear, pull the crossmember out, and tip the tailshaft down enough to get that bolt in there. Leaving the driveshaft in the trans to keep all your fluid in there.

Don't forget to remove air cleaner/distributor cap if you do try and drop the tailshaft low enough.

 

X2

 

I'm sure you can get it in this way no big deal.

 

You can do it just like the above way, I removed it that way when I went to a tunnel mounted trq arm and had to remove the "clamshell"

 

take off the driveshaft, take the 4 bolts that hold the tail-shaft on the trans and take the whole damn thing off, its not hard, little fluid loss if any and then you can do whatever you want wherever you want with the torque arm bracket.

 

gave it a shot.. no go.. solid engine mounts ... dropped the crossmember and the trans only dropped about 1/2" total...

 

Guess it's either leave the bolt out, pull the tail off the tranny, or the whole tranny out. Have fun.

 

i was able to put the bracket on with the trans in car...just have to go at it in the right angle...

 

Yeh I never tryed it with solid mounts. I guess you have 2 options to try witch ever is easyer remove the engine mount bolts and hope it pivots. Or take the tailshaft housing off as said before it's only 4 bolts but you will lose a little fluid.

 

tailshaft housing. It will take 30 minutes tops.

 

happen to read my post?

 

i did the exact same thing and was wondering could i get by with one bolt and the answer is yes the one bolt that i have in it is still tight even when i spray 150 horse hitman still no problems 355 solid cam 3800 conv 92 firebird be looking for pics

 

Remove the tailshaft housing and put the bolt back in. Otherwise you will be fighting a losing battle. Takes less time and is easier in the long run.