As some of y'alls might have figured, I live about in the middle of nowhere... over an hour from the nearest gas station, let alone parts store. My neighbor had an old beat up 122.. I made arrangements for my friend Joe from Denver to buy it..

Well, Joe came up yesterday afternoon.. we got the 122 running yesterday for the first time in a year or so...that was easy. The problem was some sort of drivetrain clunking going on, which we figured just to be carrier bearing bushing issues...and that it would make it back to Denver (2+ hour drive) if taken easy.

This morning, we had a fun day milling some lumber and generally just hanging out. Then it came about time for Joe to get moving on, and for giggles, I crawled under the 122 and found a bit more serious problem. The carrier bearing bushings were fine. The output shaft bearing in the gearbox had about 1/8" or more of play all around. Not a good idea to try to drive it to Denver that way. We thought long and hard about the various options... Gambling and going for the drive, Joe staying around until Monday. Changing the transmission out. Fixing his transmission.

Well, he really couldn't stay until Monday. There weren't any handy spare transmissions around...except for OD units. But no appropriate driveshafts. But I knew i had some bits around from a previous project gearbox... So I managed to find the output shaft from this box I had dissasembled... still had the bearing and aluminum housing attached, so I figured what the heck...

Pulled the flange, housing, and bearing off that junk output shaft...and thought there was a chance we could replace it without pulling the gearbox out of Joe's new car. So I got under Joe's car.. got the driveshaft, the flange, crossmember off, and took out the four bolts that hold the bearing housing in place... lo and behold, it came right off (the one on the junk shaft took some beating). We were in luck so we thought...The bearing back there was clearly absolutely utterly wasted, but all the main bits were there, so I wasn't worried about large parts in the bottom of the gearbox.

The only problem though... the parts I had were off a late M40, and Joe's '65 has an early M40. THe bearings aren't the same... later box has a bigger bearing. So we had to go with the later type housing... which measured up fine with one exception. The rear seal ain't the same size. The earlier gearbox flange uses a smaller seal than the later, and the splines are of course different, so we couldn't just swap flanges. And, the later seal is larger outer diameter, so the smaller seal wouldn't fit either.

So in the end, we put it back together with the smaller flange, the larger seal, the larger bearing.... It should leak a good bit of gear oil. But damned if the clunk didn't go away. I drove the car after putting it all together, and it ran and shifted great, and felt smooth.

Joe is headed towards Denver as I type... won't know for a couple hours if he actually makes it, but I think he'll be fine. I'm sure there was other damage to the gearbox done having that bad bearing in there, but it felt fine.

Sorry for the ramble, but I just though it was cool that such a serious problem was (hopefully) rectified in a short amount of time in the middle of nowhere with very minimal appropriate tools for the job. I'll reply if/when I hear from Joe.

What a way to spend the day...

-Matt