I have an 84 Ramcharger with a 360, and there is nearly 3/16" end play on the crank. I know the original owner, and the thing only has about 100k original miles on it. That seems like an awful damn lot of end play. All the bearings, including the thrust bearing are in great shape. Anyone know what the deal could be? Seems very odd to me.

 

WOW! Crank end play should be .0035 to .0095. There has to be wear on the crankshaft trust faces and the thrust washers to get anywhere near that kind of end play.

That kind of end play has to be raising hell with the rod bearings and the timing chain.

 

clutch or auto? sounds like a lot of clutch dropping...

 

Yeah, I was telling the owner that it's more common to see heavy wear on the thrust bearings and crank on vehicles with manual transmissions, but this particular vehicle is an auto, which makes this problem more perplexing. I have no idea what the problem is, but I'm going to start pulling it apart now, and see what I find.

 

Update:

Well, I called up a buddy of mine, who is also a mechanic, and asked him if he's ever seen anything like this, and if he knows what would cause something like that, and he said... "Yap, The torque converter is bad." He says that's common, and that he's seen that a lot. He said that the converter starts pushing hard on the tranny, and caused the thrust bearing to wear out. He told me that if I put in a new crank without changing the converter that it will just ruin the new crank too.

 

You said all of the bearings including the trust bearing are in great shape. How do you know this if you haven't been inside yet?