The postmortem and rebuilding/repairing.

(09/26/2011) After another week on the salt for the Top Speed Shootout I got back home and with Jim's help, we began the process of removing broken parts and trying to get the car driveable so it can come off the trailer.

This is a close-up look at the exhaust tube that was very neatly crushed by the driveshaft.

The arrow points to a hole punched through the floor pan...approximately 6 inches from my butt.

Even with the glare, you can see that one ear of the pinion yoke is broken off. The other side, complete with strap and bolts is intact.

The transmission tail shaft holds the remnants of the slip joint. This picture shows that I had a (required) driveshaft loop. It was mounted per rules at the front portion of the driveshaft. I'll be installing a 2nd one at the rear when we get to that point.

We loaded up for bear when preparing to remove the nut holding the pinion yoke on an old rear end that I had. Just about every tool known to man for removing stubborn nuts was at our disposal.

All we needed was an air-powered impact wrench. It backed out along the threads very smoothly. The fact that I'd soaked it with Kroil for a couple of hours might have helped.

And there it is, ready to replace the broken one.

The nut on the rear end in the car came off as easily as the other and the good one was installed.

I thought it would be a nightmare to remove the remnants of the slip joint, but it came out with a slight tug using a pair of Vise-Grip pliers. Now all I need to do is find a driveshaft so I can take the car off the trailer.

(10/24/2011) I finally got another driveshaft but it needed a new slip yoke and rear u-joint. I got that done today along with replacement trailer ramps. Seems the place I bought 'em handed me ramps with a part number that was off by 1 and what I got was ramps intended for garden tractors. No frikkin wonder they bent when I drove the 3400 pound car on 'em...they were only rated at 1100 pounds. I think we're about ready to offload the car from the trailer so the preparation for next year's salt flats racing can begin.

(10/28/2011) Junkyard driveshaft installed.

(10/29/2011) Water (I think that's all it was) spewed outta the exhaust when I fired it up to get ready to drive it off the trailer.

Jim's clearing the whiteboard so we can start a new list. It's gonna be a long one.

The new ramps worked great.

We put the drive-on ramps underneath just in case, but didn't really need 'em.

Now for the bad news. The transmission is junk. No drive at all, although the parking pawl is doing its job so the output shaft is prolly ok. More investigation is needed.

Next page: yet another resurrection.

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