Before I read in the service manual that the dowel pins are supposed to go into the block first, I tried putting them in the tranny. I was able to push them in and pull them out with just my fingers. Are they supposed to fit this loose in the tranny? I'm assuming I have to tap them in with a hammer in the block because they will be a tighter fit there.

Yes, you are correct.

So if they are supposed to be that loose in the tranny, what good do they do alignment wise? Won't the engine/tranny wiggle with the play of the dowels in the tranny?

They should slip fit into the tranny, not wiggle around. I've never measured, but would be surprised if the dowels wiggled more than 0.001-2" when they are seated in the trans. Holes in trans could be worn, or new dowels are junk? I've never replaced a dowel.

Lou

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They aren't new, they are orignal used ones. Maybe wiggle is wrong word, overexagerating the situation, but there is a small amount of play. One of the dowels had some paint on it from when rattle-canning the block I would assume, and when this part of the dowel was pushed into the tranny there was zero play by hand.

Hmm now you have me worried Lou about worn tranny holes.

Pierre,
There are, what, five or six engine-to-transmission bolts holding them together? I would be very surprised if there was any movement, if all the bolts are torqued properly.

Jerry

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Jerry,

Not worried about movment, but alignment. I've had my torque converter > flexplate bolts work themself loose (and later discoverd the person who assembled the engine to tranny never put the dowel pins into the block) so I'm kinda paranoid about this now.

Crap, that's no good. Dah bums...

The bolts do not serve any alignment purpose, just hold the two together. The dowels make the critical alignment between the engine crankshaft and the trans input shaft. If this is off by more than about 0.005" (center-center), you will likely have vibration/wear problems.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

Do you think theres a possibility dammage was done to the transmission because of no dowel pins? I'm not too tranny savvy... I think theres some sort of bushing/bearing on the shaft right? I can try wiggling that to see if there is any play in it.

I'll try some feeler gauges tomorrow to see how much room there is between the dowel and hole in tranny

If you drove it and there was no vibration, I doubt there was any damage done. Hard to tell on the TC bushing by inspection, I think.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

The flexplate bolts worked loose 2 or 3 times... there wasn't a vibration that came from the front just the rod-knock noise produced by loose bolts, but there was a mild one that sounded like it came from the rear end.....

Hopefully the dowels will help, but if you didn't get leakage out of the trans front seal, you're probably OK.

I always locktite my flexplate, crank, flywheel, PP, etc bolts.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

Lou,

No leaks past the seal. The bolts were locktite'd - the high strength red one (permatex brand). Suckers kept coming loose... First time the torque converter was heli-coiled. Second time the torque converter was swapped, bolts loctited. Now, the third time, I'm changing flexplate, got an EdgeRacing converter, noticed dowels missing so will install those, and goign ot use hightemp highstregth red loctite.

These bolts on the torque covnerter are fine thread, the others were coarse.

If tranny bushing was borked and causing vibration it would clearly come from the front and not sound like something from a rear end, right?

Hmmm, not sure you could identify the location of the vibe, since sometimes they travel through the whole body structure and set up low frequency resonances.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988