Rabblerouser’s first wrenching session
(From left to right) Gio Andolina, Bobby Newdoll, Jeff Cramer
Truckee, CA- JMC Industrial Powder Coating.
It was Saturday morning, April 14th, 2012. I headed up to Tahoe with a car full of parts, and I was ready to wrench. I showed up at Jeff’s house about 11 am, where the rest of the team was eagerly waiting. As soon as we got to the shop, we opened up our parts box, and admired our new toys. It felt like Christmas.
This is what we got:
Tranny Cooler with built in fan
Oil Cooler with built in fan
5” Tachometer with shift light
New fuel pump, and glass jar fuel filter
Dual mount battery tray
New single chamber Flowmasters
Feels like Christmas
We split up to divide and conquer. The rear end was leaking out of the third member, so I tackled that project. I had to pull the rear tires, remove the third member, remove the axle shafts, remove the axle shaft seals, and off to the store to buy new seals and gaskets.
With the third member out, we noticed a hairline crack in the carrier. At some point we will have to replace the third member, but we decided to try to run it to see if it would hold up for now. We counted the ring and pinion gears and divided the pinion gears by the ring gears to get our rear end ratio. Looks like we have 5.13:1 gears! Wow, certainly not good for top speed. We buttoned up the rear end and off to the next task.
Tranny service- G Skinny performed the tranny service. New tranny filter, new fluids.
Gio under the tranny
Mount the coolers- First, we removed the old coolers.
Old Junky Coolers
Then our master fabricator, Doctor J, welded new brackets to the roll cage to support the coolers. 
We flushed the motor oil and tranny oil out of the old lines, mounted the coolers, and reinstalled the lines.
New coolers
Tachometer- We removed the old tach, and installed the beautiful 5” tach. Skinny has a tendency to redline the heck out of things, so the shift light will help keep him from blowing up the motor.
Mounting the tach
Wiring- What a mess. We started tackling the wiring, but we ran out of time. More to come on that project
Oil change- New filter, and new oil.
Sometimes the hustle and bustle stumped even the smartest of mechanics….
duhhhh, what was I doing?
That’s all we had time for on this wrenching session.