I started the evening by pulling the bobble strut and bracket off of the parts car tonight, and I think that’s the last part that I’m going to need from it for the transmission job. I spent a good deal of time putting that car on some shorter jack stands and collecting and organizing all the tools. With that done, I got Dirty in the air and went to work.
The front end is torn apart now, and the half shafts have been removed from the transmission. I left it to drain overnight with the next planned steps being to remove all the ancillary connections from the transmission before unbolting it and removing it from the car.
Interestingly, the driver side axle came apart on me when I went to remove it. I didn’t have to apply much force to it, so I suspect I would have been in there pretty soon anyway to replace that axle. Hopefully the ones from the donor car are in better shape. I also found that there was a significant amount of pitting on the insides of the brake rotors, and that pitting looks deep enough that I won’t be able to machine it out. Not sure what’s causing that, but I need to keep an eye on it. I also trashed the boots on the tie rod ends and the ball joints, of course. The ball joint boot appears to be dealer-only, while Suspension Restoration has the tie rod boots for $4. I’ll also get new sway bar bushings and end links while I’m ordering parts since the existing ones were pretty worn. It is a lot easier to manipulate the control arms with the sway bar removed, though.