"Experience is what old fools call their mistakes."

I was really hoping to get the engine and tranny in the car tonight. Was so optimistic that I rented the hoist, and Hans the amazing mentor came over to help.

But things never go quite as planned.

We did manage to get the engine mated to the transmission, and that's all sealed and torqued. Hans did the major work installing the turbo and exhaust manifold, however we found that the turbo was reassembled so that the oil cooler lines don't quite fit right. I've got an email and a photo off to that shop to see if we can loosen and rearrange things without causing damage. At this point I really don't want to spend more money, esp for mistakes due to my lack of knowledge.

Mating the engine to the tranny was going well, until I stripped the threads for one of the bolts. Thought it was due to a crappy torque wrench (don't buy tools from cheapass.tools.com) but in reality I had forgotten that an engine mount bracket was meant to attach to that one position and pushed the bolt past where it was designed to go. Should be fixable, but a word to the wise if anyone ever reads this -- there should be a note in the Bentley manual about that one position so those of us who are not doing the job in a single day and have faulty memories don't make my mistake.

The axles are almost done -- just trying to find a tripod bearing that fits the left axle properly. The used one I acquired isn't quite the right size. Apparently there was a slight change after the '85 model year and though they look almost identical, the newer ones will NOT go onto the older axles.

When I got the control arms boxed, I should have left the old ball joints installed to keep them from getting deformed. There will be much banging and prying to get things properly aligned again. The new lower control arms look VERY stout:



So -- not as much progress as I'd hoped, but there are fewer ziplock baggies with bolts and nuts in the "to do" box, and things are much closer to being done than at the start of the day.

Lessons learned today:

1. Urethane bushings are not like rubber (thanks Hans!)
2. One of the middle transmission bolts on the right should not be installed until the engine mounting bracket is ready to go. Noted in the Bentley now.
3. There are different tripod bearings for post- and pre-'86 900 models
4. Shop towels and nitrile gloves make for a happier workshop
5. Don't work on the car after 11pm when you've already been at it all day.
6. Power steering lines are easy to connect when the engine is elsewhere