Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Ok, that’s a pretty obscure Bowie reference, but then a Borg Warner T10 4-speed is a pretty obscure box of gears today. You can only stare at something with that much potential, looking all greasy and rusty and sad, before you gotta recast your schedule and make it look its worth.

So into the truck it went along with the rebuild kit my loving spouse got me for Christmas (seriously ladies, no sweaters; buy car parts or wrenches and you’ll be amazed how often the trash and recycling get taken out).

This was a good project to take ’round to my friend Tom’s engine shop, given he has every tool known to man, a large heated workspace and experience rebuilding this very gearbox.

He shook his head at the price I paid. “A hundred and ten bucks?,” he said. “It was worth that 30 years ago.” A customer stopped over and he liked it too. When he heard the price, he said, “You stole it.”

We cracked the case and internals looked good–so good in fact that changing the oil might have been enough for another 50,000 miles. But my mission was a rebuild….

(This tool for removing the press-fit speedometer drive gear is handy.)

Things came apart pretty well, though those thick C-shaped snap-rings are tenacious. I pinched my hand pretty good with the handle when the snap-ring jaws slipped off the clip–but there’s no sympathy for non-permanent injuries here. Tom just says, “toughen up.”

Next step was to de-gunk. Fortunately, one of the tools on hand is a pressure washer. Every shaft, gear, housing and other metal component big enough not to fall through the cage floor got the pressure wash and solvent treatment. Bolts and smaller stuff just got solvent, and then polishing on a wire wheel. The wheel also zipped all the rust off the shifter rods.

It was a promising start–and fun, so time was in warp drive. The devoted half day sped by on afterburners with only disassembly and some cleanup checked off.Not sure why I thought this would be a one-day project. The brain cells behind that determination have been reassigned from Logistics Department to Beer Tasting.

There was more wrenching ahead. Stay tuned!…

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 9:41 am and is filed under Car parts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.