Well, on this saturday, I went to Shayne's(iPd) house armed with a noisy, not perfectly running car with a "three speed manual" transmission, with two m40s(one good and one bad) and an overdrive in the back seat area. A little after an hour later, (plus some "breaks"), my car emerged as a genuine four speed again, with no gear noise while idling. Our(his) only real catch-up was a stupid, stubborn allen(hex) bolt holding the tranny to the bellhousing. After some torching, wrenching, and vise-gripping, "chiseling" broke the bolt free. Out came the old tranny, and after swapping the flange and top cover(mine's a long stick) from my "old" m40 to the later "new" m40, it went right in with a new top cover gasket and some Valvoline 80/90wt gear oil.(we also took my speaker magnet off of the bottom of my old m40 and placed it on the bottom of the new one for good measure)

While disconnecting the throttle linkage to allow the engine to rock back and lower the transmission, Shayne pointed out a little rubber cap that had deteriorated on my carb causeing a vacuum leak... I thought the worn-out DGV was running even worse than normal... I left the two broken m40s with him, and the as far as i know good J-type overdrive(i shoulda kept that one... ;D).

After this, i left with a quiet(relatively) tranny, and was a lot lighter from the lack of the two trannies and overdrive unit... I left the shift boot off, so the car was even louder inside than it usually is. The return of first gear, the less vacuum leaky carb, and the lighter weight made for quite a fun drive home. Seemed very fast ;). This fun drive home spurred on the idea of going for bad gas mileage on this tank, and for the rest of the weekend, i kept up a floor it whenever possible attitude with multiple 6k rpm meetings... When i filled it up again, i had averaged 15.3 mpg, which is quite an improvement over when i first got the car and tried for bad gas mileage(13.3mpg)... New plugs, coil, wires, fuel filtering, "cleaned engine"(water into carb, de-carboning), quality oil changes and filters, and adjusted timing i guess all added up to it.

On saturday night, or was it sunday, i painted the hood with my rattle can stuff that pretty well matches the stuff that is on the car. Now in place of the patchy primered spots and "tan" spots, is a roughish all tan hood. Better than only partially tan, but no where near beautiful...

Monday's project was putting carpet in the back of the car and making it a little quieter. I picked up some mat sound deadening somewhere in the past couple of years that i never really used. Well, i cut a little strip out and stuck it in my worn out shift boot, and used the rest of the two mats to stick on the bare painted metal floor behind the front seats. I used some duct tape(i have quite a bit on my car, just for reducing sound transmission mostly, a little hole patching in the firewall, and under the rear bench seat) to cover the hole surrounding the transmission cover where the stick connects, so that was no longer open, and then covered that with the newly sound deadened shift boot. In the back floor area, i got some tan carpeting from my dad(we just recarpeted some of the house) and cut out a piece to cover the mats and that whole floor area back there. And then also cut out a piece to cover the rear deck(if you look in some of the later pics in my gallery, you can see that the factory paneling back there is all gone).

That was what my weekend consisted of, well having to do with my car that is.

SOOO, finally, my conclusion is this. On my ride back down to Corvallis, my car is very much quieter, although that engine fan and booming exhaust dumping under the rear bench can't let it get too quiet. But, OTOH, it isn't as disturbing revving it up high(4k+) anymore, the insulated shift boot and duct tape made quite a difference in noise coming from the engine... So the ride on the highway wasn't as disagreable. It's nice to know that your engine has no problems sustaining a 4k+ ride for over an hour... Well, the DGV causes me problems with that, but i've said enough already.

One more thing. SOUND! What a difference it makes! You know how i said my car seemed "fast"? Well, it SURE DIDN'T seem as fast when it became quieter... How's that for seat of the pants?!
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Kyle - attending Ore. State, while my '68 142 AWAITS ME OUTSIDE!!! ('74 b20, FIXED! "new" m40!!! thanks to Shayne and Mike!) Also, be sure to check out my cardomain site,