Hello ALL!!

OMG!! Three days of hot sun and up to my elbows in grease and grime,
but I can say that my engine and trany transplant are complete and
successful!

Three days you ask???? Well if it was just pull out the old and slap
in the new, it may have been day and 1/2, but the project was a
little more complicated than that.

After pulling the engine with only ONE broken exhaust manifold bolt,
I had to pull the trany and do what I needed to do to it.....
(Started the pull Friday @ 1:30pm and worked till dusk.)

THE TRANY!! Well, I had ruined at least the main input shaft bearings
on my 98 5speed with the 3.94 final output ratio soooo I needed to
replace it right? WELLL, I could only find an old 95 or 96 5 speed
with the 3.55 final ratio... Was $100 so I picked it up BEFORE I
started the project. I spent a half a day completely disassembling
the old trany, making sure to count the number of teeth on the
differential ring gear and the pinion of the final gear train.

After removing my trany and splitting the case I found that the input
shaft was a bit frozen to the rear bearing, so to remove both the
input AND ouput shafts I had to BREAK the bearing race of my original
transmission case, so I had to use the old case.

Counting the pinion gear teeth, my final had 18 teeth while the 3.55
had 21 soooo that ment I had to swap out the output shafts of my
trany with the junkyard one. (4th and 5th gear ratios are identical
for both tranies)

After swapping out the finals and sealing up the trany I was ready to
install my rebuilt trany to the new engine.

Sat. Early morning was spent with detailing and prep, then I had help
of a neighbor to carry the new engine down from my second floor apt,
so I started swapping the external parts of both engines at about
12pm Sat.

By the end of Sat I had swapped everything, and found a few more
items that needed detailing before I could drop the engine in.

Sun. I had finished bolting on all of the external components,
transmission and dropped the engine in by noon Sunday, I then began
to hook up and attach everything, being sure to go slow and careful
to assure against error. By the end of Sunday I had fired the engine
up to check for leaks and break in the cam for 15 min. (Still had
axles, brakes and wheels to put on.)

REMEMBER, I am doing ALL of this in the STREET next to my ANAL apt
complex that will not let you work on cars in the lot. K?

Monday morning was spent going over the details and puting in the
axles, brakes, and wheels. I made SURE to use Plymouth ATF-4 for the
transmission this time!

Much to my amazment the trany did not leak a DROP of fluid, and I
made sure to replace the seals as well as sealing up the case with
Plymouth anarobic sealent.

I modified the shifter for short, quick, shifts, so the first drive
was to check out the drive train. Everything was tight but smooth.

I drove to the auto parts store to find a new exhaust bolt and began
to watch my gauges to campare from the old engine.

Old engine oil pressure was maybe 60 psi cold and 50ish warm at above
3000 rpm and 25psi cold and 6 psi warm at idle.

New Engine 75 psi cold and 65 warm at above 3000 rpm and 30psi cold
and 20psi warm at idle.

Vacuume, old engine was a smooth 14 inchs at idle.

Vacuume on new engine was a jumpy 13-14 inchs at idle. (Talking to
machine shop, the jump is from the overlap on the crane #12 cams)

POWER!!! Seat of the pants dyno, the old engine was good till about
6500 rpms but the pull was so so.

New engine has GREAT pull starting at about 2000 rpm and I have not
reached the upper limit yet. (Is strong till 6500rpm so far)

Well that is about it, so far. I have about 60 miles on the engine so
far. Pictures will be on RMNEON yahoo group, under "PLATINUM PROJECT"