1 July 2005, Repairing broken power top motor.  My motor failed as all the others have.  The repair used a mail order replacement part from Christian in Germany.  The details are all in John Adam's web page linked in the friends section of this blog.  I went in with him and then followed his lead on the repairs.  He was kind enough to include reference to some of my subtle modifications to his work plan.  The stainless steel milled transmission output shaft cover is a fine piece.  I followed the provided instructions and disassembled the transmission and removed the brass bushings.  I was very careful to preserve the position ofthe gears so I wouldn't have to go back and resyncronize the motor.  I punched out the output shaft bushing with a large socket.  I also punched out the smaller brass bushing that receives the motor drive shaft.  It's filled with grease and would need to be throughly cleaned to remove shavings anyway.  I put the open gear assembly aside on the bench and covered it with a rag.  I went at cutting the cover to accept the kit piece. I started using cutting wheels and a dremmil on the straights and the cover reinforcement.  I ended up using a very dull jigsaw on the big curve.  The 3/8ths drill and parallel grinder made short work of the tight curve.  I used it and a round file to do the final milling.  With careful milling, I got the kit piece to fit as well as I could have wanted.  After mocking up the transmission assembly to verify that the kit piece and output shaft with brass bushing were properly aligned, I used a finishing nail to punch drill marks through the threaded holes of the kit piece with it installed in the milled cover. I ended up drilling bolt holes one size bigger than necessary everywhere except the tight curve because those little bolts only start with dead-on straight with the stainless steal kit piece.  Reassembly went smoothly.  The job took about 4 hours.  I tightened up the top raising and lowering armature bolt and adjuster on the top end.  It works a treat!  I'm very happy.

After repairing intake manifold gaskets and replacing the valve cover gasket and rocker arm pivot end plugs,  I decided to dress up the engine bay by painting the intake manifold and valve cover.  I cleaned them up with gunk and a lot of rinsing, then painted them with 5-6 coats of Black Duplicolor 1500 F engine enamel and reinstalled it with new gaskets at throttle body and fuel regulator vacuum connector too.  After a week or so, I decided to add the chrome ///M oil filler cap and polish out the raised highlights.  Here's a shot of the finished job.