P15 2ea eng block to bell hsng brkts - lock washer (or not :)

[3046moparcoupe]

Wondering if any of you P15 owners out there, with the original engines and tranny setups (3 speed manual),  might do me a favor next time your under the hood, and take a look at the brackets that attach the lower rear of the engine block to the bell housing.

 

Each bracket uses four bolts (2ea) 3/8 and (2ea) 5/16,. our P15 only had lock washers on the larger 3/8 bolts going into the bell housing, and no lock washers were present on the smaller 5/16 bolts going into the block..

 

Just wondering if that's the way they were originally put together, or if half of ours got removed over the years, (which would mean that either the tranny or the engine got pulled sometime in the past),....or who knows - maybe depending on availability at the exact time a car was going through the assembly line, it might have gotten lock washers or not..  

 

Thanks again for all the knowledge and help here on the forum..

 

Steve

[Niel Hoback]

The parts manual might help there. Mine has been out so many times nothing is original although I used lock washers on most everything.

[3046moparcoupe]

Good suggestion Niel,..I've actually had more success (so far) using my oem parts manual than I have had in using my shop manual...

The (parts manual) does show to have lock washers on everything, but it also shows only 3ea of the smaller 5/16's bolts - and we know that's wrong, as there are a total of 4ea...so far we have found a few errors in the manual - anyway - I still cherish it...

Just thought I'd throw this out there and see what responses might come back, thanks for taking the time to reply.

I'm not trying to build a purist/concours type project,...but these original bolts have cleaned up nicely, and by the time they go through the bracket, then you add a good 1/16 inch thick lock washer, you loose some thread,...so then you go to the bolt store and get longer ones (and they only have sizes that jump by 1/2 inch increments, so you cut your new ones down to fit,..(which is great fun, I enjoy it,easy breezy stuff)....and in this case isn't such a negative as the cut off end of the bolt is enclosed up inside the eng block,...which will protect it from immediately starting to rust and degrade from day 1....

S.