It figures...

I have a guest poster today, you know because I'm so busy I don't have time to write it myself. 

Actually, it's just because he was venting on one of his sites so I said put it on mine too.

Robbie:

Today here in Southeast Michigan the weather was this:

So I thought it would be an AWESOME day to take a drive in this:

Brandi and I drove around and had a fun little trip... I came home, backed into the driveway, let my beautiful bride out so she didn't have to look "un-graceful" trying to get out in the garage. I went to back the next 30 feet into the garage and the truck wouldn't move.

Nothing...

I shifted out of reverse and back...

Nothing...

I could hear gears whirring and spinning, but the truck wouldn't move backwards. Forward, yes, backward, no. I started exploratory surgery:

The "master mechanic" I bought the truck from was nice enough to include a bunch of extra parts. Unfortunately, most of them weren't for a Dodge. He did have a transmission, but here's the rub...

I have floor-shift transmission...

Hee-hee, get it? The shifter is on the floor... Okay so I'm a spaz. Really, though, my transmission uses a floor-shift lever. and the transmission I had as a spare uses a column-shift mechanism:

So, just change the top cover - right?!? That's what I had planned. But when I took the cover off of the replacement transmission I found out that it was a syncronized type while mine is not. Thus, the cover will not interchange... Well, the cover will but these won't -

So I spent an hour removing these rivets that had been driven into place by an angry assembly line worker when Harry Truman was in office, probably thinking about going to fight in Korea:

So now I am at the point where I can actually start changing the transmission... The replacement looks pretty good so I have high hopes.

O.k, back to me now - thank you Robbie. And I have good news to share:

Ta-da!  We can once again make nachos.  Yay.....