After losing two bolts out of the cast aluminum adapter housing from Mark's Adapters, the 80 was left stranded in Colorado at 10,000 feet.  Tons of folks came out of the woodwork to offer help and our own Lone Star Land Cruisers already had a posse formed to come retrieve me all the way from Dallas.  I think Josh Baker was actually disappointed when we told him I was going to take it to Phoenix and he didn't have to make a 30 hour round trip haul! .  :-)  It's nice to have such good friends and contacts.   After researching the various options to repair it in Durango, I decided to talk Brad Musil into getting involved.  Thanks to Brad and his trusty trailer, the 80 was drug from Colorado back to Phoenix, AZ where we could asses the damage and take advantage of a full machine shop to effect repairs.

Once apart, we discovered that there were several contributing factors, not the least of which was my inadvertent omission of the two alignment dowels in the housing that define its relationship to the sandwich plate.  That, along with two broken motor mounts, probably accounts for the failure of the aluminum threads due to excessive vibration.

Brad spent a solid day re-aligning the sandwich adapter/housing, machining the missing dowels from scratch, and welding on "tabs" to the housing.  He doesn't look real happy about it either, does he?  Using the newly manufactured dowels as the aligning mechanism, the bad threads were drilled out and helicoiled to SAE 1/2 x 13 specs.  Grade 8 bolts were acquired and that problem was put to bed.  Additionally, two bolts at the top of the housing/sandwich adapter were missing and Brad found a source for those in the proper metric size.  This one is the mystery... it is obvious that the bolts belonged there, but the threads were dirty and had obviously never been used.  Chalk it up to "haste makes waste" I suppose.  Once the housing is in place, these spots cannot be seen from under the truck and I suppose I just never realized they were there. 

Lastly, the little aluminum tabs Brad welded to the bottom of the Mark's housing were to allow the bolts that hold the transmission to the sandwich plate to also include supporting the Mark's housing.  Brad scared up some 1/2 x 20 bolts in an appropriate length to run through all three pieces and really support the adapter housing from the bottom as well as the top.  Oh yes... the little metal "pilot" on the end of the torque converter had sheared off when the tranny drooped and I was skeptical that it could be repaired such that the pilot would be perfectly centered.  Brad thumbed his nose at me and proceeded to weld it back on PERFECTLY centered and it slid into place "like it had eyes" (one of Brad's lines...).  One more quick weld to the tranny skid plate and we were ready to switch the ratchet over to "tighten". (one of Nolen's lines... :-)

The end result is that there are now 10 bolts where there 4 before and the drivetrain is smoother than ever.  The motor mounts were a bear to replace, but my fan no longer hits the shroud and the 80 rolled 1000 miles back to Texas without incident!  Thanks to everybody who offered help along the way and a big thanks to Brad for putting me at the top of his already busy schedule!