It’s been a month or more since my last blog and significant progress has been made on the Ranchero. Shortly after I finished the engine, I enlisted the help of my neighbor and his friend to drop the engine/trans into the Ranchero. Here’s where the “fun” began.
For those of you unfamilar with Ford’s “Toploader” series of 4-speed transmissions, they are considered indestructible. One reason for this is that ALL Toploader 4-speeds have cast iron cases. This means they are HEAVY ! For this reason, I decided to install the engine and transmission as a unit into the Ranchero’s engine bay. Huge problem – my engine hoist with “tilter” could not lift the combined engine/trans combo high enough to clear the radiator support and “dive” downward into the bay. After a lot of effort, some very bad words, and the rubber gloves I had taped to the rear of the transmission coming off (dumping about a pint of trans gear fluid on my drive), I gave up and pulled the transmission off the engine and just put the engine in the car.
If you want to test your strength, try this. Lay flat on your back with your arms extended over your head. Then try and lift a 75 lb Toploader. NOT !! I ultimately borrowed a big strong guy from my friend’s construction crew and we got the transmission on my floor jack. It took two hours to manuver the trans into the engine — literally on inch at a time. But finally, the engine and transmission were in the car. Now the “easy stuff.
A set of Hooker headers and tailpipes and Flowmaster 40 mufflers came with the car. These were installed in the car when I bought it. No problem, I’ll just bolt on the headers — easy peasy — and then re-attach the tailpipes. Only the ghost of Henry Ford knows why the flange of the driver’s side header hit the trans crossmember. But, a short session with my 4″ angle grinder and a beautiful notch was made to secure the pipes. The Hurst shifter was dropped into the hole in the floorboards (Ford has a detachable “hump” which enables full access to the transmission from inside the car) and hooked up. Plugging in the speedometer cable and e-brake wrapped up the “bottom side” work and the car came down off the stands.
All this effort beat the stuffings out of me for several weekends while enduring comments from my wife such as “Look at your brusies, cuts and scrapes– this is what you call fun ?” But now I can focus on the “topside” jobs to include wiring, carb and fuel, hoses and misc. bits and pieces. We’re very close to starting the beast. Hopefully it won’t be another month before I blog with the results.
