The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline Potential problems separating engine from tranny

I read/heard somewhere to avoid separating a used original combination due to potential issues of spline alignment/balance problems later. Any truth to such? Should splines be "marked" when separating the two? Other issues if any? This is a new one on me.

Having been in the automotive industry for many years,and having work many of those years on transmissions etc. It is common to replace tranmission,clutches,bell housings,rebuilt or repaired auto transmissions and we never had to worry about balance/spline alignments.However, every engine has at least 2 alignment dowls installed on the rear,so that when a bellhousing or automatic transmiion is installed it will be in correct alignment. Should one or both dowels not be installed then the bellhousing or auto trans will be installed shifted to much up or down or side to side. So that the trans input shaft won't go into the clutch,and a torque converter wont bolt up to flex plate or the converter hub wont go into the back of the crankshaft. The dowels were the only thing we had to make sure in place when puting things back together.

No problem taking them apart and putting back together again.

Ed

If you have a 2 piece drive shaft mark the center joint so that it goes back together the same way as the shafts are generally balanced as one piece .

John