Time to buy a Lotto ticket

[danzo]

I can't believe what happened the other day. I was casually strolling through a few of my friendly neighborhood j-yards; you know - saying hi to old friends, sampling new dishes from the Roach Coach - when I fell flat on my face. I found a nearly intact '85 T4wd SR5! And yes it still had the damn 6 speed! If you remember my car has a a stripped first gear so I've been desperately searching for a solution.

I know up north you guys can pick up a good used gearbox at your corner convenience store for $.99 when you buy a large soda, but where I live they are extremely hard to come by. I've been combing my 30+ local yards for the better part of a year and have come across exactly one T4wd, which of course was sans tranny.

So I went back to the Pick 'n' Snag yesterday with a BMW friend ("geez what an odd vehicle") and grabbed the gearbox, center console, mudflaps, window regulator, and inner CV axle cups. All this for just over One Ben Frank. The car has been in the yard since early July and was complete except for most of the gauge set. Mileage showed 259K which worries me (all the gears do engage), but the car apparently was retired due to a locked up engine. It even has a complete set of gold old school Enkei Minilite replicas (with studded snow tires?!?) , which I may grab today. Even the interior was in really decent shape, it's a shame the owner didn't just spend an afternoon slapping in another motor. The car also has an electric sunroof, cruise control and what appears to be a rebuilt carb. Two tone blue - maybe this car belonged to someone here? According to the inspection and oil change stickers it looks like the engine seized sometime in 2006.

But before I install 'er I wanted to ask if you guys have any suggestions for me. Of course I will replace whatever seals I can easily accsess and change the fluid, but I don't know what is T4wd specific. I'll search the archives and learn what I can. I'm not in a big hurry to install it so I want to take my time and do what's prudent. Thanks in advance for any help.

Not making the trip up to Seattle turned out for the better, though I would have loved to go. Funny how things work out.

[Petros]

Well we could have gotten you two of everything you need. Great find. I often see a lot of good cars in the local yard that had something fairly easy to fix. When you have a car worth about $600, and it needs a clutch and a brake job, it would cost you more than $600 to have a shop fix it. So they unload it at the wrecking yard for about $100. too bad.