There Goes Sunshine

Well, my hopes to beat the rainy season just didn't make it. The Autumn rains have begun and the bus is still on jacks in the driveway, and the engine/transaxle are still sitting on the garage floor. I had a few delivery issues, and some other things come up, but time just pushes out on projects this size. My last mishap was the killer, though.

"I didn't like the sound of that..."
I alluded to an issue with the adapter plate in a post a week or so ago. Here's what happened. After waiting for the clutch and pressure plate to arrive, I mounted them onto the flywheel using the extra output shaft I had from the 091/1 vanagon transaxle I had lying around. Once everything seemed aligned perfectly, I attempted to mate the engine and the transaxle. Since the engine is on a little wheeled sled and the transaxle is on a ATV jack, everything would move if I pushed. After about 3 hours of manipulating the transaxle it seemed to be aligned, but I couldn't get it the last 1/4". I figured the friction between the output shaft and the splines on the clutch disk was greater than the wheels resistance to moving. What I should have done was roll everything against a wall so I had some resistance to my pushing. Maybe I was tired, and should have just taken a break. Instead, I tried to close the gap by tightening down the nuts on the adapter plate. That proved costly. I used my torque wrench because I was concerned about screwing things up, so I set the torque wrench to 20 foot-pounds and worked the jump-the-center concept of torquing. Unfortunately, the plate was not designed to handle any torque that pulls or pushes it from flat. The KEP adapter plate is designed to hold the transaxle and the engine together (once flat) and from rotating relative to each other. So, the adapter plate's design combined with my ill-advised means of closing the gap lead to the adapter plate's failure. Yeah, that's right, I cracked it with less than 20 foot pounds.

Enter the rains.
So, I talked to Kennedy about the cracks in the plate. They said send the cracked plate, and they'll send a replacement. They even said they had a bunch on the shelf, so they could get it right out. So far, so good. Then, a week later, they tell me they'll replace it, but I have to pay for the new plate. That's not exactly replacing, that's a willingness to sell me another one. They did give me a 15% discount on the replacement plate (at least that's what I think it calculated out to). My costs for the Kennedy Engineering stuff has become a much larger percentage of the costs than I had intended. $440 for the original adapter kit + $170 for the "replacement" plate + $120 for the stage1 pressure plate = $730. That's a lot of cabbage. Certainly more than anything else on this project, and it irks me that they didn't give me a better shake on the cracked plate. Anyway,I haven't opened the box yet; it arrived on Friday.

While we were dicussing the plate, the sunny weather ended. Here in the Northwest corner of Oregon, the rainy season usually starts by the middle of October. This year, it basically started on the 2nd of October - 2 weeks ahead of average. Honestly, even if it was on-time, I ould be in the same spot, and I probably wouldn't have goten the engine into the bus. At this point, the delays from shipping, and the cracked plate negotiation cost me 2 weeks. So, I'm pushing my goal to have the engine in the bus, and the bus in the garage to Halloween.

I'll be re-attempting the engine - transaxle husbandry this afternoon. If all goes well, I may still be able to get the engine into the bus next weekend. Then, there's getting Hal over here to do some welding, clearing the garage, etc... Should be a busy couple of weeks. Oh ,did I mention I started a new job on Monday? Busy days, but life would be awfully boring if I was only trying to keep one ball in the air :D