See, I have a much different approach: just don't worry about it. Seriously.
I say this as a friend, much appreciative customer of your excellent BW-finding skills, and philosophy grad/trained adult edumacator/bartender.
If you really need to have some kind of all-encompassing fiction just make your own fan continuity (fanon) and give yourself a really good all-purpose Deus ex Machina - the Odieverse uses a variation on the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Infinite Improbability Drive called the WII Drive (the W stands for Wheeljack btw) and everything makes perfect sense even when it's inherently self-contradictory. Also I can just use a WIImote to represent it if I ever get around to making the Odieverse into webcomic form.

The canon for most TF continuities is such a nightmare of contradictions and confusion and plotholes you could drive an inexplicably disappearing semi-trailer through that if you sit down and try to make some kind of coherent overarching plot out of it you'll go insane.* I do suggest flicking through the TFwiki if you have any continuity-specific queries, but it won't give you many if any definitive answers canon-wise 'cos there aren't many, especially for G1.

Just sit back, open a nice cold Boags/Cascade, enjoy the awesome little robots/puzzles/whatever-the-alt-mode is toys and the sometimes good cartoons and comics and usually not good videogames we get from this oddly addictive hobby of ours and relax. Giving your girlfriend a shoulder massage and telling her she looks exceptionally beautiful today will be a way more useful and rewarding use of your time and energy.**

* We could really do with an obviously insane smilie btw.
** smilie not included because it looks really seedy there.