IML: Doing a trans tune up by myself

[Matthew Gill <mgill3@xxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Some of you are probably following my trans issues with my 81. Well  
the mechanic buddy of mine that i met through a friend tells me i  
should just do it myself! (Wow, who woulda thought right?) He says i  
can easily pick up four of those little ramps, drive the car up on  
them and take off the pan, replace the gasket and the filter, and  
bolt it back up nice and tight.

He also tells me that i should put some Lucas trans fluid additive to  
help stop any slippage, he says he had a Dodge minivan that started  
slipping on him, and he used the Lucas fluid and drove the thing for  
another 60k miles and then sold it to somebody else, still in good  
shape. That sounds quite promising.

So, i think i'll pick up those ramps, the filter and gasket, and i'm  
even considering buying one of those fancy chrome transmission pans  
instead of the plain one, for 25 bucks.

Any tips or suggestions would be great, and i'll be taking care of it  
on Thursday so i'll let everybody know how that went.

I was also told that if i'm hearing grinding in the rear end and the  
car rattles sometimes while driving, the transmission mounts may have  
broken (one or more i guess) and they can simply be replaced with new  
ones, so i'll check it out and see what that looks like. He doesn't  
think that it would have anything to do with the U-Joints. Also, he  
says that when putting the car in gear, for example from park to  
reverse and having that THUD, is pretty normal for a car since it's  
engaging into gear, and generally just shakes a bit. I would really  
prefer it not to do that, so we'll see what i figure out after Thursday.

Matt


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