Classic Mustangs List Archive

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Mail From: David Harr (email redacted)

Some background - I bought this car, very clean, in Jan of '97 from
the original owner (well, his son, anyway). It is an original A-code
V8. After I bought it, I spent a bunch of money fixing up the suspension
so that it was reasonably tight again. I did some light mods to the
engine, including a new aluminum intake and a set of tri-ys. On a trip
to Southern California from the Bay Area, my 289 decided to grenade in
a totally out-of-the way place called Coalinga, literally 200 miles from
both LA and San Francisco. I needed a new engine fast, so I bought an
'87 150K 5.0L HO engine from a friend and had it out in to the car. I
kept the carburetor and the standard front cover, mechanical fuel pump,
etc etc, so the car still looks basically stock. However, the long block
under the hood is a late-model Mustang engine, not an early 289.

The story - My old T-10 has been getting worse and worse as time goes
on, so I decided to switch out the old 4-speed for a brand spanking
new 5-speed. After much thought and research, I decided to get a Tremec
TKO kit from Dark Horse Performance. This kit includes a new Tremec TKO,
a replacement cross-member, a Hurst shifter and ball, and an adaptor
plate to mate the TKO with the early bell-housing. Pretty much everything
you need to do the swap, from the transmission side. There are, however,
a couple of gotchas while doing this. One is that the TKO, unlike the
3550 (its baby brother) has a 26 spline input shaft, instead of the Ford
style 10 spline input shaft. For those of you who were as completely
ignorant of how clutches and stuff work as I was before I started this
project, there are three pieces to the a manual clutch. The flywheel is
attached to the crank, and the clutch disc comes in contact with the
flywheel. The transmission input shaft fits through the middle of the
clutch disc, and as the flywheel and the clutch unit turn, the
transmission input shaft turns also, driving the transmission. This
shaft has a number of splines on it, and the clutch disc has a hole
that fits very tightly over these splines, allowing it to drive the
transmission. The problem is that the TKO uses a Chevy style input
spline instead of a Ford style.

Problem #1: Find a clutch disc that would work with the TKO
and a 302.

Solution: Unfortunately, there are no 10" 26 spline clutch discs
that I was able to find. So, I bought a CenterForce clutch that
was meant for a late model 5.0 converting to a TKO. It has a 26
spline clutch plate and pressure plate that will bolt up to a
302 flywheel. The problem here was the this clutch is 10.5",
while the standard '66 clutch was only 10". I couldn't remember
whether I used the late model flywheel (which is set up for a
10.5" clutch) or the early model flywheel (which is set up for
a 10" clutch). There was no way to tell until I had the engine
apart. I could only hope for the best.

Problem #2: The transmission yoke for the TKO was bigger than the
transmission yoke for the T-10.

Solution A: Take the drive shaft in to be balanced and have the
u-joints replaced with a set that would adapt to the different
size yoke for the TKO. This leads to:

Problem #2B: My driveshaft is totally inadequate for the kind of
horsepower I am contemplating putting to the ground in the near
future. When the guy at the shop looked at it, he said one word
"pretzel," meaning that is what the driveline would look like
possible the first time that I unleashed the power of the engine.

Solution B: Get a new driveshaft made that will be able to handle
the horsepower/torque levels that I will putting out soon. The
problem with this is that I have to have _EVERYTHING_ else finished
first, so that I can measure the distance from the differential to
the back of the transmission, to give them the proper length to
fabricate the driveshaft.

Problem 3: With a larger drive shaft, now the pinion yoke on my 9"
rear end is too small for the power we will be putting out.

Solution: Pull the pinion assembly out of the rear end (spilling
gear oil all over the garage floor in the process <sigh>, and
have the guy who fabricated the rear end for me in the first place
put in a new yoke. This is _NOT_ a home mechanic doable piece of
work, because the preload on the pinion has to be exactly right
in order to get the "perfect pattern" in the differential.

As you can see, there were several "gotchas" that I had not thought
about before I started this process. It has been a very interesting
learning experience, that is all I can say. At the moment, the old
tranny is out of the car, the flywheel (which _WAS_ the late model
type, so works fine with a 10.5" clutch) has been resurfaced and
installed in the car, and I will put the pinion and the clutch and
bellhousing in tonight, assuming that the flywheel runout is correct.
Once I get the pinion, clutch and bellhousing in, I can measure for
the driveshaft, which I hope to have fabricated tomorrow. So it is
possible that, by tomorrow night, I will have a running car again.
Then again, it may be the weekend. If there is any interest, I will
post a complete account of the entire process when I get finished.


David



-------------
David J Harr
Senior Software Engineer
Realtime Associates
mailtoemail redacted)

"I've been on the bleeding edge for so long, I'm down three pints..."

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This read-only message was archived from a public mail list.
Mail From: (email redacted) (email redacted)


In a message dated 2/23/99 3:00:29 PM, you wrote:

<<So it is
possible that, by tomorrow night, I will have a running car again.
Then again, it may be the weekend. If there is any interest, I will
post a complete account of the entire process when I get finished.>>

So, David, as I understand it, the moral of the story is:
Don't drive to L.A. from the Bay Area? <eg>

Kraig Griffiths
67 GTA Fastback (and I stress the "A"

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