I looked into the 8.8 a little. Seems like Ford built a 7.5 rear that's 4 lug, but pretty much anything that's 5 lug RWD is an 8.8. Almost, if not all, of them are disc. They put it under Lincoln Mark VII, Ranger, Explorer, Mustang looks like from around 83 thru present through early 2000s, perhaps they still make it today.

Seems to me that a guy planning a mega A body upgrade might do best getting the T5 and driveshaft and rear axle and a Scarebird front disc conversion together all at once. Then you've got discs all around, 5-on-4.5 bolt circle along with the 5 speed and hydro clutch with the RAM TOB and the Wilwood pedal/master setup. Looks like Pull-A-Part gets $121 for a rear end assembly complete, and you would take the driveshaft with it for an extra $14.25. Transmission goes for $54.32.

So you'd be looking at under $1000 to do the whole magilla.

I also found this about various places to find T5s:
The T5 used in the 5.0L Mustangs is very similar externally to T5s used in numerous other rear-wheel-drive applications-mostly in turbocharged SVO and nonturbo'd, four-cylinder Mustangs; the '89-'93 T-bird SC; 305ci Camaros and Firebirds; S-series pickups; and the '84 Nissan 300 ZX to name a few.

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1965 Valiant wagon Turbo slant (work in progress)
2000 Chevy 155" cargo van - The Abductor
1970 Newport convertible
1996 Buick Roadmaster Wagon
1966 CruiseAire motor home
1990 Toyota 1 ton box truck TURBO slant (scraped)

chevy used a different shifter location than ford on their t5's

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I am the Guardian, I hate helos, everything leaks.......

There's definately variation in where the shifter is located between ford and chevy. If you get the adapter plate right, I think the s10 would be excellent, the shifter is far enough forward that you won't need to cut the transmission cross member. It'd probably be awesome for bench seats, too. I know there are plenty of other nuances, but I don't konw them by heart. If you can't find the info here, they're thoroughly covered in the various mustang/firebird/camaro forums.

The 8.8 axle sounds like a pretty awesome swap! Unfortunately for me, I rebuilt my 8.25 about 60k ago, so I just want to swap gears and go; it's already a limited slip. I'm also pretty dead set on at least 3.73, probably 3.90 gears, and the little bit of looking I did says the highest factory ration in an 8.8 is 3.55. If I didn't already have money/effort sunk into my current rear, I'd be giving the 8.8 some serious thought!

Also, I'd love to find a t5 for 54 dollars!!! The yards here want like 10x that. Even in private sale, it's hard to find one for less than 300... I need to move where you are, kip.

I procured my t5 for $150, and for now, it's what I'm sticking with. We'll find out how many synchros are bad once I run it the first time, lol.

Its easy to find 8.8s with 4.11 and 3.73 ratios. Look for Explorer or truck units.

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Yeah....Im the one who destroyed this rare, vintage automobile.....

International?

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Richard (aka Fingers)

Longer dead, made cars and trucks.

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Joshua

Studebaker?

Yes!

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Joshua

Woohoo! What model was the axle in?

From what I can tell most every car from the mid '50s cars all the way through the end of production in 1966. I had a Twin-Traction Dana 44 (probably from a Hawk) I was considering using in my Valiant, but thankfully came across an 8 1/4.

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Joshua

So, I'm resurrecting this thread! Life in general, and grad school interrupted this project, but it is well on its way again.

Parts I now have:

Ram hydraulic throwout bearing
Machined flywheel
Fabbed lower mount
Poly trans mount
Fabbed upper crossmember
Wilwood master cylinder
Pilot Bearing adapter

Left to do:

Final assembly of motor/trans
Re-create transmission tunnel
Speedo cable
Sort out bugs and such
Enjoy 5 speed.

I finished machining the pilot bearing spacer, and created the clutch linkage (pedal to master cylinder). The linkage is done by removing the pins from the stock 4 speed pedal, and using them to hold in the new assembly. I used a heim joint and an adapter to get from the pedal to the master cylinder.

I cut out probably more of the floor than needed, and re-constructed the upper cross-member to have room for the T5. I also fabricated a lower transmission mount. I expect the stock drive line angles to be maintained with this. I plan to box in the trans tunnel, use it to mount a GPS and a drink holder or something.

In the next couple of weekends I am planning to get the motor/trans in the car and verify fitment and operation of the clutch. In a couple more weekends I hope to get the everything running again, the trans tunnel re-made and maybe even go for a test drive. I'm hoping that I'll have everything on the road again by September! Only one more class to go to be finished with grad school and have more time for important things like this!

Pics of the current work are attached below.

Wow, this is a lot of info to take in but I'm really digging the fact that you're going in depth unlike anyone else has really done. I'm really interested in this swap myself, we'll atleast I think I am I want to build my motor around 170-180 at the crank, and then low a small amount of boost. About 1 bar or 5-8 pounds...and it seems like that'd be too much for the T5.

But URGHH...how fun it'd be to shift through the gears...

Especially with a Slant, especially with a turbo. Keep going and good luck with it!

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19 Years young with a passion for all things old.

"Four doors for more....screaming passangers..(;"

"There's no replacement for displacement, but my \6 is still cooler than your V8"

Well, it's been a while since the last update, but here goes... no pics right now, maybe later.

Everything is mocked up sitting on dollies, been in and out of the car a few times. It's all looking good except the throw out bearing placement.

With all the spacer washers I got from RAM clutches in place, the TOB is a quarter of an inch too short from the correct distance to the clutch fingers. The setup is:
-Group buy slant six t5 bellhousing
-stock PP, trued up by a machine shop
-RAM hydraulic clutch for a T5
-4cyl T5 from a turbo t-bird
-Stock 10" B&B clutch
-Mustang v8 10" clutch disc

The clutch disk is a little bit thicker than the slant disk (from memory, not notes on all the numbers), I think around .030". This causes the B&B fingers to be depressed a little further than with the stock disk (don't remember the number, but it's not the .250" I need).

The problem is that the anti-spin stud is too short if I put in any more washers behind the bearing, and I also run out of the TOB snout on the T5 input bearing retainer.

I've narrowed the options to the following:
-Get the bellhousing shortened .250" plus a little ($$$, need a machine shop that can be trusted)
-Put a .250" spacer behind the flywheel to take up the distance (no... I can't find any good examples of anything much more than a .020" spacer behind a flywheel in any application to correct for machining, and this just intuitively feels like a really bad idea)
-Switch to a Mcleod TOB (don't even know if this will fit, and it's a $500+ gamble)
-Switch to an external slave piston and stock fork (no... just because I don't want to. )
-Get a taller pressure plate (i've called the local rebuilders - they say it doesn't exist, and they can't build one. Don't want to pay the big money for a real custom spec PP, if they can even be made that tall)
-Lengthen the input bearing retainer and anti-spin stud .250" plus safety margin (this is what I intend to do)

Lengthening the stud should be trivial. Lengthening the input bearing retainer TOB snout is a little harder. My plan is to part off the existing snout on my lathe, make a new, correct length snout, machine out the TOB retainer and press my new piece into place. Apparently there are pressed-snout input bearing retainers available in the aftermarket, so I think this is a safe option.

This also puts all the operations within my capability which is (IMHO ) trustworthy, and also the cheapest and most fun.

The only outstanding problem is finding the dedicated time to get it done. Ha. I'll post results one day, when I get to it. In the meantime, I'm open to better suggestions.

Wonder how this turned out, if completed?

And, I don't remember the Op addressing what I would think would be big issue in the conversion, the bellhousing to Slant 6 adapter, and the input shaft dimensions? Did miss that reply?

It's still a work in progress... all the parts are sitting next to each other waiting for attention. It's not been forgotten... just delayed. I'll definitely be posting an update when I make progress again.

There's been a little upheaval with jobs over the past few months, and it's autocross season, so I've been putting time on my 240 Z. As an intermission, check out the work on that car's fuel cell: http://forums.hybridz.org/topic/122633- ... ell-cover/



Which part of the bellhousing and the input shaft are you curious about? The bell housing was part of a group buy some years ago that I picked up, and the T5 is from turbo T-Bird.