I mated the overdrive portion of the transmission to the rest of the gearbox and got it prepped for installation into a GTE I’m working on. I work mainly by myself when I’m at my personal shop, but transmissions for 330s and 250s are definitely a two-man job. I leaned on a friend of mine to come over to to help me for what basically takes 15 minutes for the two of us to install the transmission, but without his help, it would be too dangerous to try it by myself. Thanks Tom, for coming over to help!

When I was inspecting the transmission a couple weeks ago, I found this washer at the bottom of the gear box. Luckily it was not part of any of the internal pieces of the transmission, because you can imagine what kind of catastrophic failure that can happen when a loose part with all those gears spinning about. The part looked familiar, and it confirmed it when I looked to see if it was missing on this car.

The gear shifter uses this little cap washer to retain a spring which is held in by a c clip. This one must have fallen into the open transmission case when someone was working on the shifter. I put the washer back where it is supposed to live and all is well!

With the transmission back in place, I replaced the interior, and continued sorting out the rest of the car. I had a target date to get this car done, so I was trying my best to make it.

The freshly sealed and painted steering box was reinstalled.

As I was testing the transmission and sorting out some of the overdrive electrics, I noticed the cooling fan wasn’t engaging. Checking the thermostatic switch, I found it wasn’t working, so I would have to swap that out, but I saw something else that didn’t look good.

Wisps of steam was coming out of the side of the radiator. I could see where the pressurized coolant was weeping out of the radiator, so I called the owner and told him we would need a little more time with the car.

These leaks could be watched, and coolant could be filled whenever the levels got low, but a repair would eventually have to be done.

This looked like the original core to this radiator, and some of the cooling tubes were starting to separate from he header tank. My radiator shop can order an exact copy of the original core, and have it done in about a week, so I immediately pulled the radiator to send it out. I might not make the original deadline, but I’m making this car right.