<VV> Oh Crap! Zero Speed transmission....

[Tony Underwood]

At 02:07 PM 9/8/2009, Kinzelman, Andy wrote:
>Regarding John Robert's reply - specifically: 'pull the front cover off
>the tranny to remove the stub by knocking it out'.
>When a friend broke his input shaft - we removed the 'stub' through the
>diff using a 'magnet on a stick' - worked well.





When I broke an input shaft in the Corsa ragtop and drifted into the 
parking lot where I worked (was feeling frisky and banged a vicious 
2nd gear to bark the tires and impress the coworker I saw standing 
out front) I just rolled into the usual space and parked as if 
nothing happened.    (I have my dignity... and the tires hadn't 
barked and nobody had been impressed)


After work, I got a ride home from a friend and took stock in my 
situation, rounded up what tools I'd need and piled them into the 
trunk of the Plymouth and went back to work (still had several hours 
of daylight) to see what was what.   I figured I'd broken the input shaft.


I'd brought with me the necessary specialty tools to get the engine 
out of the car in the parking lot, which I did.   I pulled the shaft 
out of the transaxle and found that about 3 inches of it were 
missing.   I wound about 30 or so turns of fairly beefy stranded 
hookup wire around the clutch end of the replacement input shaft and 
hooked the ends to jumper cables, slid the shaft into the transaxle 
til it "hit home", then attached the cables to the battery, 
magnetizing the shaft which allowed me to extract the snapped-off 
piece.     Reassemble, drove the Corvair home, got a ride back to 
work and retrieved the Plymouth and drove IT back home.


I stopped bangshifting any Corvair with 11" wide tires on back after 
that.   (the same tires are still on the back, getting pretty old now 
and they need to go)


Hell, I don't bangshift any Corvair anymore regardless of what tires 
it has.   It's no fun yanking an engine on the side of the road in a 
parking lot.   People tend to stare.



tony..     still have the 3" piece of input shaft on my carnage shelf