Finally managed to pull the flex plate from the Gremlin today. This was after a discovery last night, where it became clear to me that someone (presumably a very crafty burglar) had carefully unbolted the cat from the downpipe flange and cut said flange and the cat's exit pipe with a small reciprocating saw, leaving me to do a parts store run or two and a trip to my friend's house across town with no muffler. The sound was pretty awesome.
Exhaust repair was the name of the game prior to this evening, as well as driveline greasing at the slip yoke and ujoints in the hopes of correcting a hard shudder from the rear on acceleration. I'd share any pictures or lessons learned if I had any, but the closest I can muster is "don't do exhaust work on a car on the ground when it's hailing outside. It sucks." Since I guess you're supposed to keep rolling when the dice are hot, I trucked on over to the shop after Eagle maintenance and found that it was a damn good thing I decided the flexplate had to go.
In case my crude attempts at making things clear isn't successful, let me clarify by saying that the crack I had noticed was accompanied by three more that I hadn't. Really, it looks like this fella would've kept working just long enough to give me a reeeeeeeeally bad time.
Getting the plate out wasn't as easy as I would've liked, mostly because of where the crossbar that my lift is designed to use comes across right behind the transmission bellhouse. This left me with just barely enough room to fit a socket and ratchet in, and not a bit more than what I needed.
All the same, it really wasn't too bad. I think the real challenge will be torquing the bolts to spec once installation time comes. I probably would've had an easier time with the whole thing if I'd used jack stands, but that would've entailed a whole other kind of mess I'm happy to not deal with.
Once I rejoined the surface world, i compared the old flexplate to the older flexplate. Everything lined up, neither of them had holes where the other didn't, and they we're both made of metal. Looks good to me. If I end up having any problems with the replacement plate, I'll likely get the 4.0l plate and starter, which will do me favors as far as parts-availability goes.
I have an update that I'll post as soon as I'm sitting still in a place where I have a WiFi connection for long enough to write it up. It's concerning the transmission fluid & filter change/low band adjustment I did for Eagle a couple of days ago, so isn't terribly amazing, but does have a few surprises. Until next time, if it takes me a while to post an update, it's probably because I'm either hard at work or dead.
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