I have an '89 240 w/ automatic transmission. How do I figure out which AW70 tranny I have? What I mean is ...the junkyard folks wanna know whether or not the tranny bell housing has a notch for some sort of sensor or something. What are they talking about...and what's an easy way for me to figure out which tranny I need? (mine made it through a leak in the transmission cooler/radiator...but it's never been quiet right after that...so I'm lookin for replacement tranny.)
Cabbie2169

Yeah your car would need a tranny with a notch. But thats not a problem in most cases because the ones that don't have a notch have a punch out for one. You just break out the punchout with a hammer.

The notch that they are talking about is probably for the crank position sensor. There is a ring with holes in it on the flexplate, and there is a sensor that mounts on the top of the bellhousing, and these 2 parts tell the ignition system how the crank is positioned.

Before this system, the engine position was monitored by a magnetic pickup in the distributor.

In an 89, you should have the Bosch LH2.4 fuel system with the EZ-116K ignition, so you should have this flywheel/flexplate sensor system. You can check by looking on the top of the flywheel, behind the head. It is close to the firewall, and it is black plastic with a wire coming out the top.

Incidentally, the crank position sensor is considered a wear item, and it fails usually after about 10 years, a little less for turbos (700/900) and maybe a little longer for N/A. When this happens, you can often have warm running problems. Meaning that your engine will just die, and then if you wait 10 minutes, it will start again.

Greg
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http://home.earthlink.net/~greg.wong/