We finally had a nice weekend, and I took today off to take full
advantage of the good weather so I could finally get my truck fixed.

By yesterday evening I had the transmission in place and figured about
an hour of work today and I'd be on the road.

Right...

I got everything back together and the mickey mouse clutch linkage fell
apart the first time I put my foot on the clutch.  I thought maybe I'd
gotten that worked out and took off down the road.  The truck was in the
driveway with the nose facing the street because that's the way the
wrecker left it, so I didn't have to use the brakes pulling out of the
driveway... if I had I would have noticed right away that they didn't
work, as it was I was going about 35 MPH and headed downhill when I
found this out.

Needless to say the next 45 seconds or so were quite exciting!
Fortunately I got the truck stopped with no damage except to my blood
pressure, and one very confused dog!  (Murphy had come along for the
ride, as he does on all our test drives).

That problem was easy enough to fix, the master cylinder was dry.  I
refilled the MC and went to bleed the brakes and even though I was
carefully BOTH the rear bleeder screws broke off.  Those self bleeding
screws work great but the sure are delicate... and I don't have the tool
to remove the rear drums.

OK, so now I've got double pump brakes that work tolerably well, but
during all the excitement and bouncing around the clutch assembly came
apart again, and wouldn't stay together, but it hung together well
enough to get the truck going and I was able to get it home again.
Modifying the plate the pivot attaches to seems to have solved that problem.

During the first aborted test drive the transmission seemed to be
working fine except the OD wouldn't engage (it's directly wired so the
governor isn't in the circuit).

Once I had brakes and what seemed to be a good clutch linkage Murphy and
I took off again.  This time the truck kicked, and kicked HARD, out of
first gear.  Second and third seem to be fine, but still no overdrive.

I got underneath and adjusted the shift linkages and checked the lockout
lever on the OD.  It was fine when I got the transmission back together
but now sort of flops back and forth.  By this time it was dark and I
had to pack things up for the day.

So, after all this work I've got a truck with no overdrive, no first
gear, and wonky brakes.

As first gear seemed to work fine earlier I'm really hoping that the
adjustment fixed it, but I'm skeptical, that doesn't seem to be the way
my luck works.

I don't guess I'm really asking anything (unless someone knows a good
transmission rebuilder) but I needed to vent.

This sh.t is really getting old.

Jeff DeWitt