Applied some POR-15 to the differential. If I had more time on my hands, I'd go ahead and do the whole underside, but that's just going to have to wait for another day... or ... whole lot of days ;-)
But the 8 3/4 sure looks better now!
I'll probably set a few days aside for coating the pans whenever I yank the gas tank to get it lined.
Any of you out there remember the old goofy show Hee Haw ? I have no idea why we used to watch it at my house - none of us were even mildly interested in country music at the time, but may have been the skits... like the one I based this little ditty on:
Where oh where is my wallet tonight?
Why did it leave me here all alone?
I went to Coan to buy a transmission...
My wallet went 
ptptptptptpt and then it was gone!
But in its place I brought this home!
Sweet action! 727 Torqueflite, built for hell. In
the lower right is the 2400 stall converter. I dread doing the
installation, but I have to believe a thing of beauty like this looks much
better installed than it does sitting on my garage floor. 
Finally! Got it all back together and started back up
tonight. Did it really take me nearly two weeks? Damn! Well here's
the run down of why. After a lot of wrestling that took all weekend
(12th-13th), I managed to get the new transmission wrestled into place.
With headers that like to get in the way and a starter that likes to prevent
forward movement, I likened the whole process to trying to build a castle out
jello where all the pieces have to be fitted together at the exact same
time. Aye yi yi! And after all that, after spending all day Sunday
trying to figure out how to reach all the bolts and how to get the starter hung
back in there, something was amiss. The torque converter simply would not
pull forward like it should have. Hmmm. Monday, I look in the passenger
alignment hole and lo and behold, the alignment pin was gone and I was
misaligned just a bit. Damn! Hunted all over town and found one at the
Mopar dealership (Mopar # 1122532 if you're in need of one), and spent all day
Tuesday taking the transmission BACK out... and yes, I had to take it completely
out of the way because the bore of the transmission case is tapered and doesn't
allow for popping the pin in through the back side. Pounded in the
new pin, all the while weaving new tapestries of profanity about the prior
owner's "skills", his heritage, and his family, then spent the rest of
the evening putting my castle of Jello back together. Torque
Converter? Still wouldn't pull forward! 
Thursday... pulled the whole thing apart... AGAIN.
Exceeded my prior record at the artistic rendering of profanity, but by this
time I'd gotten a lot of practice. Not to mention I'm getting real good at
removing and installing 727's. Real Good. And before you ask me to
come work on yours, just remember the profanity part. 
This time, I discovered the hub area of the crankshaft where the torque
converter snout rests was full of rust. Argh!!! On a lark, I pulled out
the Dremel tool with it's teeny wire brush and ya know what? It did a
beautiful job! In minutes I was done , slathered some grease in like the
last dingleberry was supposed to do, and was back to slapping my Jello castle
together again, although by this time the Jello was quite a bit easier to work
with than before. Still... took me all night, but THIS time, the converter
pulled in nice and easy.
Spent all day Friday putting the rest of the underside drive
train back together. Drive shaft, wheels, starter wires, all that good
stuff that gets yanked when you do this much work. .gif){kind=icon}
Spent the rest of the weekend hooking up cooling lines (of course the had to be
bent, moved, and bent again), checking the radiator height, making new plug
wires, re-looming the new wires, searching for info... discovered, btw, that my
Air Grabber base plate is for a 383 instead of a 440. No wonder my air filter
lid keeps losing paint to the top of the Air Grabber box! Anyway... Would
have finished the start-up checklist yesterday but a busted pipe in the house
had other ideas for me... so here I am today. All smiles and smelling like
an over-rich exhaust. Yeah Yeah, I'll fix that rich condition later. Right
now, I don't care! 
I did have a minor scare, though. When I first started it, it made
a horrible clatter and nasty noise. Oh man. Oh man.... I was sick to my
stomach. My brand new transmission that this long to fire up is
junk. That's what I thought anyway. I topped off the fluid anyway..
still chattered although it seemed to come and go now... not nearly as loud as
it was initially. Hmmmm. Definitely changed with engine speed.
Hmmmm well... I have an oil pan that got whacked a few times, maybe the crank
was hitting it? Hmmmm... jack the car up, start it and feel around.
Nope... it's definitely in the bell housing. Damn! Kill the engine... pull
the cover to see if my converter bolts were loose..... nope.
Hmmmmm.... start it up again to get a closer
listen/look.,...... noise gone. "NO way!" I thought
to myself... took a look at the cover and sure enough, one tab was bent in just
enough to get whacked and had a very hard to find but very obvious
"machining" mark from the converter bolts.
WHEW !!!!
All's well that ends well, and this day ended very well with me
grinning from ear to ear. The headers made a WORLD of a difference. I even had
enough time left over to re-mask my grill and shoot some of the silver areas
where the red somehow over-sprayed. Tomorrow, I get to finish the touch up
work on it and buffing and put it back on... then maybe I can take my son out
for some gas and a short test spin
Do I seem happy tonight?
Really?
So is that more than you EVER wanted to read or know about this
project? Sorry bout that. I'm just excited. I'm now down to nothing but
middle to low priority jobs to do. FIrst and foremost is to take another
shot at tuning the idle circuits. I'm still too rich. After I get the
gears broken in, I get to attack the rest of the carb's settings. I also have a
little console work to do.. sloppy shifter needs to be fixed, and do some refurb
work. Ya know what? I AM happy tonight ha! ha!
And finally... a couple of "intermediate" pictures showing the headers installed, the wires loomed using over-the-counter stuff until I can make my own, and the underneath with the new exhaust plumbed in. Last test drive was less than stellar thanks to the classic Edelbrock bog, but I had way too soft metering rod springs in it. Just waiting for the weather to be a little better before I take it out for another blast or two down the boulevard to check the tuning. Aye yi yi I have so much to do. I also discovered a leaking gas tank seal around the new sending unit and when I gassed up last week, you could tell the tank was in need of re-lining. Oh joy.
Driver's side showing the swept up and over #1 tube that in my
mind prevents use of the handy little "Made For You" wire looms.
I decided instead to route #5 and 7 up and over the valve cover. Of course
that makes cover removal a little bit more of a hassle, but on this engine, I
don't intend to be cracking the covers open very often... if at all. You can
also see how I chose to route the dipstick out between the steering box and the
headers instead of between the tube and the flange as TTI directed. This
just seems a little less "crowded". If I ever decide to just
spend 50 bucks for no reason at all, I'll get one of those flexible units from
Milodon and route it even more conveniently
Here is the passenger side installation. The wires are actually quite high and away from the tubes... I should probably shoot this picture from a different angle since this one looks pretty deceiving hehehe. You can also make out the super fat ground strap in the back of the bay - sometimes it pays to work at an electronics company!
And finally, underneath the car you can see how nice the TTI's sweep down underneath and maintain good ground clearance.... it's no worse than the deep sump pan on the transmission! I did have to some pretty close tolerance cutting to fit the exhaust up properly (long story) but all told, it went REAL easy.
And last... but not least.... the grill AFTER the paint job. I'm still not 100% happy with the red stripe, but it looks good until you get close and now I'm armed with a bevy of masking options, so probably sometime later on when it annoys me enough, I'll shoot it again. Now I'm wondering how in the heck to keep that textured argent clean!
Coming soon!
Transmission removal and installation in the Tech section!