Topic: When you don't have the right equipment...
A trans swap takes FOREVER!
I had a couple days off and decided it was time to finally swap the trans in the Ghia. Only problem was that the floor jacks I have are shorties. A friend offered to loan me his big jack for weekends, but I work Sundays and Saturday is usually spent running kids to games and dodging recruiters. The math was simple:
Trans swap with big jack: one afternoon
Trans swap with little jacks: three afternoons
Basic difference is that I had to disassemble the engine down to the longblock to get it out, and being interrupted by work (on a vacation day) and errands made the process that much longer. Having neighborhood kids come though your garage, when your engine is in a pile of parts on the floor, did not help. Those little square clips that attach the cooling control flap linkage rods? A paper clip will not do as a replacement 
Anyway, the engine came out without incident after removing everything topside, but I had to put it on flat piece of wood to drag it from under the car. The trans I just picked up and carried out after unbolting the axles and mounts. I compared the new and old trans, and found I did not have to change the nose cone, but the throwout bearing was wrong for my pressure plate. I stopped by my local expert's shop, with both transmissions and the pressure plate, and he set me up with the right pressure plate, bearing, and a ton of advice (Thanks a million Scott!).
New trans went in fine, and I went ahead and cleaned out the inventory of cheesehead screws at our local hardware store because I was tired of 5 different types of tin screws on this car. Moving the filter under the car with the correct hoses was an opportunity I could not pass. Putting the engine back in required I employ the help of one of our sons, who worked the $19 floor jack while I steered the engine into position.
The third night I spent putting the engine back together. I used fiber gaskets this time on the intake end pieces, new generator stand baffle, and new distributor O ring. It was past midnight when I fired it up, and found that plug wires 1 and 2 were reversed, but that's what you get when tired! After that was fixed, the car ran nicely and I took it for a test drive. The clutch is so smooth now! That pressure plate I had before must have been heavy duty, because it felt like a truck clutch compared to this. Might even try to teach the wife to drive a stick again. Nahhh.
Only downside is going the wrong way with the gear ratios. I had wanted a little taller final drive, and wound up with a slightly shorter ratio instead. The ratio became suspect when I had both transmissions on the ground. I put a cable tie on the input shaft, and locked the one of the axles.
To get one turn of the axle required 7.5 turns of the input shaft on the old trans, 7.8 on the new trans. Divide that in two since we had one axle locked, and you get a roughly estimated final drive of about 3.75 for the old, and about 3.9 for the new. Short story is that 4000 RPM now brings me to 77mph instead of 80. Not a huge difference, but opposite of the way I wanted to go.
On the positive side, all the synchros work properly and I can shift smoothly without waiting for a check to clear between each gearchange. Also, it seems like 3rd gear is closer to 2nd in this trans, which is a good thing. Despite the final drive not being quite what I wanted, I'm a very happy camper!
Paul