Muncie Rebuild-Assembly

Assembly

Now that I had my Muncie completely disassembled, my next step was take each piece and clean and inspect them.  I found that all the gears were in very good shape and none of them needed replaced.  I did find some significant wear/damage on the slider/hub assemblies so I decided that these were going to be replaced.  I also decided to order two new shifter forks.   After I had everything inspected and cleaned I put my order in for a rebuild kit, two new hub/slider assemblies and 2 shift forks.  I ordered these parts all from Paul at 5speeds.com, who VERY helpful with all the questions I had.

 While I waited for all my parts to come in, I primed and painted the case and bellhousing.  I thought about just leaving them with the original aluminum finish but decided against this because I found a lot of imperfections in the case and thought it would look better painted.  I found a paint that closely resembled an aluminum finish.  Aluma blast from Eastwood company.  The above pictures show the finished products.

Once I got my rebuild kit, I started with the tailhouse.  First, I installed a new seal in the reverse shifter housing.  To install the seal I used a socket that was the same size and tapped it in using a hammer.  Next I installed the reverse lever, detent ball and spring.  This was tricky, and took me a few tries.  I placed the spring down into the hole and with the ball coated in assembly goo, placed it on the spring (the goo is to hold the ball in place).  I then pushed the reverse lever into its housing.  Now, the ball needs to be held down while pushing the reverse lever overtop of the ball.  I tried many tools to do this job before I found one that worked.  I have a windshield removal/cutting tool and found this to work the best. As can be seen in the upper left picture, I used this tool to hold down the detent ball while I pushed the reverse lever into place, on top of the ball.

Next the tailhouse was turned over and a new bushing was pressed into place, and a new rear seal was tapped in with a hammer.

 The next thing to do was get the countergear set up with new needle bearings that came in the rebuild kit.  The above left picture shows the orientation of the needle bearings and spacers.   I used transmission assembly goo to do this, which makes the needles a lot easier to work with.

The above pictures show the packing of the needle bearings.  I test fitted the new countershaft that came with the rebuild kit into the countergear, as can be seen in the above center picture.

 

At this point I ran into an issue when I tried to install the countergear into the case.  I found that the counter shaft, which is normally a press fit into the case, was very loose fitting in the case.  After I did some research, I found some people have run into this problem with older muncie cases.  Some people had installed custom bushings into the case to fix this problem.  I decided that I did not want to do this, so I bought a new Autogear case from 5speeds.com.  The above pictures shows the new Autogear case beside the older muncie case.

Now that I had the new case I could install the countergear.  I placed the countergear inside the case and then slid the countershaft in through the back of the case carefully until it came into contact with the front hole.

 Using my press, I pressed in the countershaft until the lower step on the shaft was flush with the case, as can be seen in the picture above.

Here is the input/4th gear and the new front sealed bearing that came with the autogear case, and a new oil slinger.

This is the input shaft assembled with the new bearing and oil slinger.  The front retaining snap ring in the bottom left.

Next the input shaft was carefully lined up into its hole in the front of the case.  Using a section of 2x4 down inside the case and using my press, I pressed the front bearing in, then installed the snap ring.

Next I assembled the 1-2 slider and the 3-4 slider.  The 3 keys are placed into their slots in the hub.  The slider is then slid onto the hub.  The springs are then placed inside the hub holding the keys in place.  One spring on one side running clockwise, another spring on the other side running counterclockwise.

Here is a link to a youtube video that explains how to put together the sliders and the theory behind them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXsRfbOiBhE

 Nex,t I started assembling the mainshaft.  The first step was to slide the 2nd gear, 2nd gear syncro ring, 1-2 slider assembly, and 1st gear bushing onto the mainshaft. The 2nd gear, syncro and 1-2 slider slid onto the shaft with little resistance, the 1st gear bushing needed to be tapped down onto the shaft with a punch.

Next the 1st gear syncro ring and the 1st gear are slid onto the 1st gear bushing.

Next the Midplate rear bearing was installed into the midplate (not shown).  The bearing was tapped into the midplate with a punch and hammer, and then the retaining snapring was installed. The complete midplate assembly was then tappped down onto the mainshaft with a punch and the smaller retaining snapring was installed on the rear to hold it in place.

The mainshaft was then flipped over and the 3rd gear, 3rd gear syncro, and 3-4 slider assembly are slid onto the shaft.

 Here are pictures of the 3-4 slider assembly being installed along with another retaining snapring on the end to hold it all together.

The mainshaft was then flipped over again and the reverse gear was slid onto the shaft.

The Speedometer gear then needed to be pressed onto the shaft.  I had made sure to note the exact location of the gear when I was disassembling the mainshaft.  Using this measurement, I made a marker mark on the shaft where the gear was to be located and then using the press, pressed it on to the proper location.

Here is the completed mainshaft gear assembly.

Next I turned my attention back to the case.  I had to now assemble the input needle bearing cage.  I loaded the bearings and cage up with some assembly goo and placed them around the outside of the cage.

I then placed the assembled cage down into the input gear/4th gear, I also placed the 4th gear syncro ring onto the gear at this time, as can be seen by the above birds eye view down into the case.

Next a new reverse idler thrust washer was placed in the case along with the reverse idler gear.

I then put a thin coat of Permatex Ultra Black silicone gasket maker around the edge of the rear of the case and placed the midplate gasket on.

And then another thin coat on the other side of the gasket.

The case was then ready for the maingear shaft.  I couldn't take any pictures of the process because I needed both hands.  This took quite awhile before I finally got the maingear shaft into the case.  I finally found that I had to have the 3-4 slider slid almost all the way forward and the 1-2 slider in the neutral position in order for the shaft to finally fit in, and drop down and engage into the input/4th gear. 

The above left picture is a shot of the inside of the case with the mainshaft installed.  With a soft face mallet I tapped the midplate down making sure it was seated into the case.  I then placed the other reverse idler gear into the case along with the idler shaft, making sure the key in the idler shaft was pointed in 12 to 6 o'clock position (relative to the bottom of the case).  The above right picture shows the key pointed in the 3 to 9 o'clock position.  I had to move it when I went to install the tailhouse.

I then reinstalled the tailhouse.  First the reverse lever was pulled as far out as it could come to clear the reverse gear.  While looking down into the tailhouse I made sure the reverse lever engaged the reverse gear and the lever was then pushed into the case, locking it onto the reverse gear.  The tailhouse was then able to fully seat against the midplate, and some new bolts were installed and tightened down.  Using some pliers on the reverse lever I tested it to make sure that it operated properly.

More to come.......

This week I found some time to work on the Muncie some more.  I just had a few more things to do to finish up the rebuild.

I installed the new reverse lever pin.  This pin holds the shift lever in place in the case.

 The next thing to do was install the input shaft nut.  To do this the mainshaft had to be locked in place so that the nut could be tightened on.  To lock the mainshaft, it has to be put into two different gears at the same time.  The above pictures show the transmission in fourth gear and reverse gear.

 The nut was then threaded onto the input shaft with a little bit of thread locker.  The nut was then tightened using the special wrench that I got with my rebuild kit.  A pipe wrench could have been used here but I was worried I would damage the nut.

I then got the front bearing retainer ready to be installed on the case.  Using the gasket from the rebuild kit, I applied a thin layer of sealant on each side of the gasket and then laid it onto the retainer.

 The retainer was then placed onto the input shaft making sure that the oil feed hole in the case lined up with the indentation in the retainer.  The bolts were coated with some sealant and then with the locking tabs supplied with the rebuild kit, they were tightened onto the case.

 The bolt locking tabs were then bent up with some pliers as can be seen in the above picture.

Next I assembled the side cover.  First, I installed some new shifter arm seals using a socket the same size as the seals to press them in.

The shifter arms were pushed through the case into their spots in the cover.  Then the new shifter forks were installed.

 A thin coat of sealant was placed on each side of the new gasket and the side cover was slid on.  The transmission had to be put into second gear in order for the side cover and forks to be able to fit in.

Some new bolts were tightened down.

The Auto Gear case that I got comes with a button that is installed over the end of the countergear, as can be seen by the above picture.  I applied a little bit of sealant and then pushed it into place.

The final part to install was the speedometer gear.  The rebuild kit came with a new o-ring, so I replaced the old one.  I, then installed the speedometer gear and tightened down the metal holding tab.

And that is it.  Above are some pictures of the finished product. The shaft seems to spin quite nicely and the transmission shifts into all gears.  I think it turned out pretty good.  The research I did and the dvd and books that I had while doing this rebuild made it actually quite easy. The real test will be when I install it into my Chevelle for the first time.

There will be one more thing to do in regards to the transmission.  I have to clean up the Hurst shifter that I have with the linkage.  Here is a picture below of the shifter and linkage before I clean it up.

This will be a project for another day.