1964 transmission Reverse only

[younghuevito]

Hello all, I bought my 64 thunderbird back in June of this year. I’m actually somewhat young without a lot of experience on old cars, I mostly worked with my dad in semi trucks. anyway I’ve done a couple things to the car but now I have 2 or 3 issues. First up is the transmission, a few months ago the car would go reverse and forward relatively fine, but I didn’t do it often because the brake booster was bad, going forward it would sometimes have some surges so it was a little scary so I stopped. I thought that maybe the float inside the carb was letting too much fuel in so I adjusted. I then stopped working on her for a while to save up for the brake booster, which is another issue but I’ll get to that after I get a few replies. So right now the car will only go back ward, I have the transmission vacuum modulator hose connected to the check valve on the booster but the car won’t go forward at all and when it does I have to have the car at a very high rpm and it moves very slowly. Before when the car would move forward a little even with the surges I actually didn’t have the modulator connected at ALL, because I didn’t know it existed (due to my lack of knowledge and experience on these cars) but I’m still puzzle now by it because now with it connected the won’t move and back then it would. Even when I try disconnecting it again it won’t move. There is a chance that the modulator itself or the hose have gone bad but I wanna tackle the bigger fish and say that the transmission has failed, because yesterday I tried driving it in my backyard and it gave me the same problems it didn’t wanna move much, and when I turned it off I heard this clank coming from the tranny I believe with white smoke coming from the tranny area. I was pretty concerned and my fears rose when I checked the tranny oil level and discovered that there was none. I was actually a pretty big idiot for not checking before so that is entirely my fault. Anyway I filled it up with fluid and now it will move reverse pretty fast but won’t really move forward so if someone could just confirm that I need to replace the transmission that would be great because I don’t have the willpower to tell myself haha.

 

[Danny]

Find a local tranny shop that knows these old cars. Ask around, they are out there. If you find an honest one they might find a simple solution, rather than "replacing the transmission." I'm not saying you haven't fried it, but it can be rebuilt if needed.

Once these cars are sorted out they are a blast to cruise around in!