Transmission Crossmember Trouble

Isaiah Estrada

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Trying to install the transmission crossmember, however I have an issue! One side of the bolts line up but the other doesn’t… It doesn’t matter if it’s left or right (tried both sides) - if I have one set of bolts go in nicely, one side doesn’t line up at all. Tried it with just one bolt (farthest one) on one side and tried to get the other side to line up but my holes are still off. Really frustrating issue, but I am wondering if there’s some kind of trick?!

This car never makes anything easy for me LOL :drama:

A62B65BB-F80E-490B-A739-6BE333F4253A.jpeg
 
Is this the original stub frame? It may be slightly twisted, which is a problem.

You may need to chain the high side down to the floor, connect the crossmember up to the lower side, and then push the crossmember up using the jack under the crossmember right at the high side to make it fit the high side... but that's possibly "hiding" the issue.
 
Is this the original stub frame? It may be slightly twisted, which is a problem.

You may need to chain the high side down to the floor, connect the crossmember up to the lower side, and then push the crossmember up using the jack under the crossmember right at the high side to make it fit the high side... but that's possibly "hiding" the issue.

Yes, it’s the original. We know that at one point in time it was moved with a forklift which really messed up the floor inside.

With some massaging and playing with the jack we were able to make the bolts thread in with ease. No binding or anything.

7381AE73-F2B0-4D9B-ABA5-BFE38B4BCABE.jpeg


I wasn’t sure if this was a issue with other Mopars or not. I just wasn’t expecting this to be as difficult as it was!
 
One of these would be your friend... Stick the tapered end in the hole and work it into place.

1661472303884.png


Called an alignment pry bar or sometimes a "line up" tool. Not expensive to buy, under $15 at Harbor Freight.
 
You usually need to get the vertical bolts started first to suck it up in place with a little massaging of the others to line them up as you are going up. As each horizontal one starts aligning put thread that one in a few threads and move to the next.
But looks like you got it sorted.
 
One of these would be your friend... Stick the tapered end in the hole and work it into place.

View attachment 554392

Called an alignment pry bar or sometimes a "line up" tool. Not expensive to buy, under $15 at Harbor Freight.

That probably would’ve made it a quick task! What I ended up doing was using two jacks, both on opposite ends of the crossmember. By using 2 jacks, we were able to manipulate this section of the frame / the trans mount to be able to get the holes to like up. Good thing I chased new threads into it as well, because the bolts went in really easily after all said and done. I was afraid of maybe cross threading some bolts or having them bind up. Was really worried for a bit!

You usually need to get the vertical bolts started first to suck it up in place with a little massaging of the others to line them up as you are going up. As each horizontal one starts aligning put thread that one in a few threads and move to the next.
But looks like you got it sorted.

I tried about every possible combination before busting out the big guns. Totally didn’t expect it to take so long!!
 
I've had the same problem because of tension on the torsion bars twisting the cross member mounts out of position.
Glad you fixed it!

Thanks! I have no idea when this crossmember was in the car last. History on this car itself is VERY vague. From what we know, it's been parked since 1980 or so (tags expired in Feb. of '80.) I got the car with no transmission, and this crossmember was in the trunk along with 2 broken drivelines.

So many reasons to speculate why the car was ever parked... bad tranny could be one of them? Also had some VERY shoddy wiring, a half arsed ammeter bypass that looks like it'd catch fire sooner or later. Could've been a combo of just a bunch of bad things at once! Needless to say, I think that this crossmember hadn't been on in decades. The torsion bars were wound up pretty tight with the car sitting high, so perhaps those mounts really got bent out of shape after all this time!
 
Did you have the stub frame out of the car? If so I found you should have the crossmember in the car when you install the frame.


Alan
 
Trying to install the transmission crossmember, however I have an issue! One side of the bolts line up but the other doesn’t… It doesn’t matter if it’s left or right (tried both sides) - if I have one set of bolts go in nicely, one side doesn’t line up at all. Tried it with just one bolt (farthest one) on one side and tried to get the other side to line up but my holes are still off. Really frustrating issue, but I am wondering if there’s some kind of trick?!

This car never makes anything easy for me LOL :drama:

View attachment 554378
r u replacing it with 1 from anouthw car? wasit on the car from tha factory?
3what did it come off of?
 
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