this moron cracked his AOD housing - general AOD ? inside

For my 28th bday i ruined my transmission.

I think i may have the wrong converter - i noticed in several ads that converters for AOD's are listed up to the 92 year 5.0. I have a 93 trans but i did not give it thought when i ordered teh converter. Anyway - my good friend and i were bolting the trans to the motor, which was outside of the car. I had installed the new flexplate, and bolted the converter up to it as well. We slid the tranny on and started a couple of bolts. as he tighted the two sides, i turned the motor w/ the crank bolt. Everything seemed OK, and the tailshaft was turning w/ the motor. He said it was getting tight, but he was only using 3/8" ratchet. With about .25" to go, i heard a loud crack. She's got a nice 6" long split running diagonally over the bellhousing around the starter. I thought it was tight b/c of the guide pins in the block, but evidently not. So - question 1) do i have the wrong converter?
2) how weak will the heli-arc weld be w/out properly heating up the aluminum? I am not an autotranny guy, and do not want to tackle pulling the guts out.
3) Anyone else experience this?
4) if the welding idea will not work, anyone want a really big paperweight?

thanks in advance for the input.

Jim,

You are correct - i bolted the converter to the flexplate first. I've always had stick cars (even the beaters), and doing it that way made sense to me - although it appears that's the bass-ackwards way of doing it. If i can get the converter exchanged, i guess i'll be experimenting with the strenght of cold welds . . .

thanks for your thoughts.

You may have runined the front pump and the converter.

Great - another reason to try and exchange the converter. I am curious about the exchangeability of the converter between a 92/93 trans. Anyone know anything about this?

As you can see - i don't know what i am doing with these stupid autos. Didn't see like a bad idea when i started . . .

Just getting a T-5 is sounding better and better. It is a stick car (the wife's 4 banger from back in the day) - and i even have a matched balanced stick flywheel. All i need is a clutch, tranny, and bellhousing. Too bad i don't have $1500 layin around.

Let's see - for next year's birthday . . . how bout dropping a valve? That always makes for lots of chunks of metal in the pan. That's assuming i get this bucket of bolts running before next birthday . . .

Well I called a reputable welding shop - I was told "no problem - we weld lots of those AOD's up - people crack them all the time". He estimated $80 based on my description of the crack and said he could get to it when the shop opened up on the 5th of january. (closed starting tomorrow for a long break). Whew! What a relief! Last nite i took the converter and seated it in the tranny like i was supposed too in the first place. Based on some crude measurements, it appears as if it will bolt up just fine now. Thank you for all of your comments - I hope someone else out there can learn from my mistakes!!

Happy new year.