Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Apart from the dirt and grease, disassembly’s easy. Get some wrenches–air if you can–and start takin’ stuff off till there’s nothing left to unbolt. Cleaning everything up makes you want to put it back together, but there’s also the issue of what goes where.

Handy people have not actually rebuilt much of the stuff they tear apart and put back together. You just have to be willing to go where others have gone before you. That’s where a good manual comes in; if you can see where each piece is supposed to go, you can figure out how to make it go there. For the T10 rebuild, I had a 1964 Buick Chassis Service Manual, with a blow-up diagram of the T10 and step by step instructions for tearing it down and rebuilding it.

Still, there are a few tricks. The critical one for the T10 is the wooden dowel that goes in the countergear to hold the 80 free roller bearings in place (along with grease) before your drive it out with the countershaft, which then takes its place. Trying to do this job without that dowel would be an unparalleled exercise in frustration and futility. I bought a dowel at Menard’s, sawed it to length and my friend Tom, whose engine shop was the rebuild site, turned it on the lathe to exact diameter.

Twenty bearings encircle the dowel, then get pushed in with a washer to abut a spacer (cylinder) within, then another washer, then another 20 bearings for each side. I then held the loaded-up countergear while Tom tapped the countershaft through one end of the case and out the other, replacing the dowel as it passed through. (No free hands to photograph that.)

You then slide the mainshaft in all loaded up with gears, clutches, synchro rings, get the main bearings in place and the main case is about done. I forgot to put the idler gears in before getting the mainshaft in place and therefore had to pull it back out again. There’s another set of roller bearings the end of the mainshaft fits into on the main drive gear and these pop out when you separate the two components, so patience is a virture. A shaft on the extension housing goes through the idler gears when you put that on to close up the unit.

Eventually it all went together, though I forgot to put the snap ring on the back of the mainshaft that sets the depth for the slip yoke and so had to pull off the extension housing again.

Still, it turned out mighty nice. A little oil on the gears to keep them rust free and it was time to put on the side cover and wait for spring. Taking the grungy, cruddy and making it like new sure is fun….

Next mission is to see if a shifter from a ‘66 Chevy can be made to fit a transmission from a ‘63 Buick. (My bet is it can.)

This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 11:37 pm and is filed under Car parts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.