The More I Learn, The More I Know How Little I Know

Call from the machine shop today:

Hi David, it’s Gary. Hey, we’re about ready to balance the engine and I was hoping you could bring your flex plate down.

Now, I generally try to avoid looking like a total idiot – but it was hard in this case to hide the fact that I was emergency-googling^(tm) what a flex plate was while trying to make small talk over the phone.

As it turns out, what I was calling a flywheel in the following picture:

The flywheel is on the left and the crankshaft is in the middle

Isn’t actually a flywheel. My Mustang has an automatic transmission. In cars with automatic transmissions, the flywheel is replaced by what’s called a flex plate. The use of this part is explained well in the first few minutes of the following video (before it devolves into an advertisement):

My car has now been introduced to how bad I am with names. I’ve been calling Mr. FlexPlate Mr. FlyWheel for upwards of a month and I had no idea. As it turns out, Mr. FlexPlate was actually at the machine shop. He was hiding under a box of parts, probably due to being depressed from my constant misidentification.

I also learned the other day how big my rear end actually is. OK, you can stop your immature laughing now, this is serious.

A car’s rear-end is also known as its differential. A differential is the part of the power train that (in a simplified sense) sits between the transmission and the wheels. The best explanation ever of the wizardry behind how a differential works is found in the following video:

As it turns out – as it always turns out – there’s more than one type of differential that can be installed in my year of Mustang. When I ordered my brake lines, one of the questions the ordering site asked was the size of my rear end. I believe my exact words were:

You’ve &*(%* got to be kidding me. What the &*($# does it matter to the brake lines what size my differential is?

Sadly, no amount of yelling at Firefox could change the fact that I needed to learn how to identify the type/size of differential my Mustang has.

Thank Flying Spaghetti Monster for YouTube:

I also relied heavily on the virtual masters thesis written about Ford rear ends on this blog.

After all that, I took a picture and went down to my local repair shop and asked :). I had what I thought was an answer, but I wanted someone actually qualified to give an opinion. Turns out, my guess was right – yea me…

So, for the curious if your 69 Mustang’s rear end looks like this:

You have an eight-inch rear end. If only I could say that about…. nah, not going there.

So, I’m learning a ton during this process. But it’s amazing that the more I learn, the more I know how little I know. But I’ll keep learning and someday I’ll know enough to not have to pretend I know what I’m talking about when I’m on the phone with my machine shop.