Its great to finally be back!

[MOPAR MARV]

Yep its been nearly seven months since my last PC coughed it's last gasp and vented it's magic smoke but I managed to snag a good trade deal for a newer board and CPU a few days ago and got it up and running last night. And here I am once more.But enough of that. Anyways,a couple of months I finally managed to track down a really decent '94 Dakota 4x4 with zero rust on the cab or the box, the front fenders are total crap though. But I have managed to track down a very nice right fender for it.

Its got four new tires , excellent glass and interior, the 318 runs like a top but the O.D. transmission only works until it gets warm, then it howls like a bad power steering pump and barely moves. The transfer case is really hard to shift and jumps out of low lock and when I forcibly hold it in low lock, it bucks like a pissed off Missouri mule.

I have a good 2 wheel drive OD transmission that I can use for parts to repair the current trans. But zero experience with the OD transmissions and nothing but a useless Chilton manual. I have rebuilt several Transfer Cases but never for a Dakota so I'm hoping someone here can point me towards a decent manual for the AOD transmission and for the transfer case as well.Any and all help will be greatly appreciated.

Oh yes, one more bit of good news, I finally have passenger door window for my '68 Dart two door sedan!!!! And it only took 27 years to get my hands on it. But now the car needs new Rockers and quarter panels, ain't life a bitch?

 

[69.5CUDA]

good to see ya back...cant help on the trans..but 10-1 odds are thats stretched chain in the t-case, and for the most part if youve been in one chain drive t-case youve been in em all as the overall function and form is unchanged, the exception being when you have a magnetic clutch in them or something but i dont think they used em on anything with a stick...only the fancy push button shift

 

[MOPAR MARV]

Hey Big Guy, Good to hear from you too. How's the old brain pan doing, any improvements since your little bench grinder mishap?

All good here except for a kidney stone giving me grief every once in a while. The darned thing is too small for them to bother operating on it and it just doesn't seem to want to pass on its own. So every once in a while it causes some of the muscles in my lower back to spazz out so bad that I'm hurtin' for a couple of days afterwards. But no biggy I've been living with pretty constant back pain since I was four years old.

After four years of flawless service I had to park my 150 dollar '91 Dakota LE in July because some local hotshot RCMP officer didn't like the amount of Rocker panel rust on it or the damage a suicide bird did when it tried to fly thru the windshield. So I stripped it out and used as much of it as I could to get my '89 Dakota back on the road for the first time in nearly seven years.

The previous owner [a major alky] passed out at the wheel, flew off a T-junction and planted it on a serious rock pile. Crushed the Trans. ,the trans. k-member and mount, bent all hell out of the driveshaft and destroyed the exhaust system too. So the little 3.9 V6 is sporting a V8 Trans. and exhaust system now. Other than a bit of rocker panel cancer, its a really sweet, low miles trucks. It runs fantastic and pulls like a champ. And with the two and a half inch exhaust system from the V8 truck on it you would never guess it was just a little V6.

I'm not too worried on the T case in the 4x4, like you said, if you've done a couple of chain drive units it is no big deal. But the OD trans has me a bit worried. I started stripping the crashed out OD trans from the '89 and there is some vastly different stuff in there and that is just inside the tail-housing. So I'd really like to find a manual, so I don't have to worry about taking that big heavy bugger out more than once.

I swapped out the broken trans in the '89 by myself, without a transmission jack and at my age it was pretty rough. A hundred and sixty-seven pound, 61 year old dude grunting away on a 250 pound transmission was a serious work out! Fortunately I'm no dummy, I cheated and used ratchet straps from frame rail to frame rail to hoist the beast up into place and two old minivan scissor jacks to get it lined up correctly. Not pretty but it got the job done and I didn't do any more damage to my poor old bod.

I kept the rolling chassis from my '91 Dakota, I'm planning to convert it to five bolt hubs and cut it into my Dart next summer. That way I can set the big block back part way into the interior and not have to worry about dicking around with that funky butt-hole trans k-member/rear torsion bar mount BS. And be able to run normal chassis headers !

And before everyone starts shouting about me butchering a rare old Mopar. Its a plain Jane 1968 Dart 270 2 door sedan, factory slanty,904 trans. bench seat ,rubber floor mat , radio delete car with One factory option, power steering! And I HATE power steering! The interior is Totally trashed, the body is beat to hell and full of bondo and I do mean FULL of bondo. Even if I did every bit of the restoration work myself, I'd end up with sixty to seventy grand or more into the car and it might be worth what, maybe 17 or 18 grand. I don't thinks so!

If I'm going to restore something, I want like a '57 Fury Hardtop or my all time favorite Mopar, a 1964 Dodge Polara 2 door hardtop or perhaps another big block 4 speed '70 'Cuda !

I paid fifty bucks for the Dart , 27 years ago ,drove it home, patched it up and drove it for over a year.

And the plan, from day one has Always been a full blown race car. And I'm still leaning towards an old school altered wheel monster. I want wheelies and mayhem of the highest order!!!

I am a totally dedicated Big Block Mopar fan and I want a Monster with Big Iron Balls !!! Not some shiny little gut bucket six cylinder Dart

 

[69.5CUDA]

ive got a 69 coupe fish ill give ya for free that was cut to fit a ramcharger chassis..just come get it lol

as for the trans..i doubt anything interchanges on them sorry to say...if it were a 727..id say everything forward of the OD tail is likely similar enuf to use

the brains ok ish..the skull bones always itch, the short term memorys that of a small bird..and looking up say..under a car lift is a NO

 

[MOPAR MARV]

Dang Dude, sorry to hear that, I was really hoping that it was going to be a temporary issue.

Kind of like my stutter when I got out of the hospital. All gone within a few weeks.

The AOD transmission is basically a modified A-904, electronics on the valve body and a bunch of new "to me" stuff in a new tail-housing. I haven't had the time to dig into the main housing of the crashed out '89 trans., yet. But I plan on checking into it as soon as I finish with the brake issues on the '89 Dakota. So far as I know, I'm going to have to use the primary trans. case and the output shaft and tail-housing from the original 4x4 trans.

According to a local Transmission tech.[ that I trust],he figures that the pump is going bad in the 4x4 trans. And since nearly every Trans. shop that I've called has quoted between 2600 to 2800 bucks to rebuild the original and I'm flat broke, I'm hoping that I can use parts from the crashed '89 trans. ,the original 4x4 unit and a good used '94 trans. that I bought from a buddy[$75.00], to build one that I can use in the 4x4 until I can afford a master rebuild kit[ $1,200.00].

And my wife has offered to buy whatever I need to repair the transfer case as an early Christmas/birthday present. After that, all it needs is a pair of front shocks and a new Pitman arm and I'm four wheelin' again.