Hello all,
Time for yet another little update.
Progress has been somewhat slowed by the fact that COVID finally decided it was time to visit our home and let me tell ya, it’s not much fun. In fact that’s my official review, “not much fun”.
I believe we had / have the newfangled omicron version and it is apparently not as virulent, woohoo!
In fact 3 weeks ago I was saying to my coworkers that I was getting tired of the whole situation and I was willing to get it and get it over with……….wrong!
We are not exactly sure how we got it but I am fairly certain it came via our oldest daughter’s household to my beautiful bride then to me.
I am OK enough; I did not get the symptoms my wife did, in fact I was sure she had strep throat or tonsillitis after a couple of days of wicked sore throat and running a fairly decent fever, we went to have that checked into and the strep test came back negative but the covid one came back positive…..dammm.
A day or so later I was feeling it and my test came back positive too. And for the record we both have been vaccinated…twice. The other bummer is that is a slow time of year at work and I had booked the week off to get some roadster work done…..hmmm.
I called my manager on Saturday to let her know my test results and got told to take another week off work that I just spent feeling mostly crappy.
It’s a funny thing this covid, yes, I guess they are “flu like” symptoms, headache, fever, muscle pain, general lethargy but it’s that last one that is lingering. I am due to be back at work tomorrow but honestly I haven’t made it through a day without at least one long nap in over a week!
I did finally get out to the shop this afternoon and do some CAD but that’s been the thing of it, I just have no ambition to do anything, the walk to the shop looks daunting and it is easy to talk myself out of it…..”maybe tomorrow” I tell myself……. So like I said, I’m sleeping lots, and a lot of time sitting staring at some other hobby interests I have here in the house….as the kids say….”meh”
However before it all set in I did get a couple of things accomplished, I built the engine mounts and tacked them in, easy enough, straight off the drawings, as I am using the original style mount parts. This was always my plan as I figured it would put the engine in the correct location without too much fuss. It worked perfectly, no issues, I swapped the weirdly shaped late model
oil pan and bolted the mounts onto the block and lifted it in place with my old custom Jet L-70 chain hoist.
So now on to the shifter question, and it’s time to make a real decision.
This did take some thinking and looking and measuring and walking away and thinking some more.
In the end I think I have a good solution and a few observations if anyone is interested. I am sure most of this info has been mentioned before but I never found it here so I will give you my notes if anyone is interested.
First up though, as for the question of engine angle I placed my digital level on the old F4B manifold and with it level I have just over a 3 degree drive line angle, and that seems to be about perfect based on the info you folks have provided. So I stopped worrying about that right away! Thanks friends.
I tried both transmission tail housings and shift lugs. Now at first I thought my eyes were deceiving me or my engine mounts were wrong. The shifter box looks cockeyed!
I checked the engine block and it’s pretty much level latterly, the trans mount looks about right but upon measuring it, the shifter box is tilted about 4 degrees to the left! I tried the s-10 tail housing and it’s the same WTF?
What is really going on is the bell housing is made to hold the whole transmission tilted to the left and the Mustang transmission mount is rotated back to the right to compensate but when you have the s-10 tail housing on the mount is now tilted to the left hmmmm, that sucks.
I did a bit of Google research and did find some references to it on other car forums but the info seems a bit wishy, washy as there are a lot of applications for the T5 and guys doing swaps are mixing and matching parts a bunch, Mustang, Camaro, Astro van, AMC, S-10 yikes!
What I do know is Ford designed this particular bell housing to tilt the shifter towards the driver ( I guess) and the tail housing is made to compensate for the tilt and swapping on a tail housing that is not made that way results in a wonky looking transmission mount. Not the end of the world but something to note.
Working things back and forth and playing with the pieces I made another discovery. You can use the S-10 shift lug in the Mustang tail housing…
hmmmm.
I believe this is MDL’s little trick for their “front position” shifter housing as you can order the kit either rear shift using the Mustang lug or for a bit extra you get the front position kit. This also requires using one of their custom shifter mounts but more on that later.
So I started laying things out and even mocked up a platform so I could sort of sit in the correct-ish position and “check the feel” of the shift positions.
I marked up the mustang tailhousing so you could see how it the various options work out. Sorry it’s so dirty, I figured I wasn’t using it so why clean it.
So based on some CAD from the drawings the shifter would fall about 15 ish inches back from this bell housing.
The Mustang shifter is at about 19 ½ inches.
The yellow mark at the front is the S-10 location at 11 3/4 inches.
The next yellow mark back is option 3 that I don’t currently have, MDL’s custom tail housing in the rear position at about 13 ¼ inches.
The next mark back is about where the shifter should be give or take, 15 ½ inches based on my calculation and where folks say the original t-10 shifter was about 16 inches.
Then on the shifter housing cover there are a couple of small marks ahead of the shifter mount and that is about where it would be with the stock mustang location with one of MDL’s 2 inch forward offset T5 shifters.
The other mark at the front of the cover is a bit of a hybrid idea I have come up with.
This I like
…..From my sit experiments I quickly discovered that the S-10 tail housing was just way too far forward for my tastes, I guess I have weird short arms or something
.
I am kind of sorry I worried about finding one in the first place but somebody told me that was the trick setup to have so I found one.
The stock Mustang location is passable but you will be reaching back a bit more than I like, let’s just say awkward.
I could go with the MDL housing but again it’s forward. Now sure, I could add a 2 inch rear offset shifter but that really starts to add up, the housing kit is like $795 and the offset shifter is $275 ++.
If I had to I would, But I think there is another way and that is using the stock Mustang tail housing with the S-10 lug kit( it’s about 1 ½ shorter), that takes it to about 18 inches back and then off set 2 inches to the front is 16 inches
. Yes I will need to buy the MDL “front position” offset shifter but I can pass the S-10 tail housing and shift parts along to some other hot rod builder as it is a popular swap option it seems.
The other thing I like is the transmission mounting point. The MDL housing has the mount in the S-10 position which is about another 1 1/2 inches further rearward from the Mustang location and that is already 1 ¾ inches too far back, never mind the funky 4 degree angle.
I am sure I could make an offset transmission mount of some sort but if I don’t need to why would I.
I am slightly worried about the overall height with the offset shifter but I figure I can move the top of the tunnel up a bit if I need too and no one but me will notice.
So are you still with me?
Having settled on that it was time to make a transmission mount, the original is very simple; I have the rubber piece already, a nice old school Ford part. After measuring things up and checking the plans I went with a slightly modified original style mounting with a ½ inch aluminum spacer between the rubber and transmission. If I need to adjust the engine angle in the future I can just vary the thickness of the spacer so it’s a good compromise I think.
The only thing I did not like was I needed to move the cross member back 1 ¾ inches. However the only thing this looks to interfere with is the brake handle mounting bracket and I have noted that on my drawing set.
Then I moved on to some preliminary work to mount the differential. I gutted and cleaned the alloy case I have as it is lighter to work with right now.
I think the cast one all up is about 80 pounds and getting it in and out of position and trying work out the finer mounting details will just be easier the lighter it is.
Honestly I don’t know if this will be the case I use in the end. I have both options and I have been told the real weight is in the gears, the difference between just the cases is about 12 pounds. If I was racing, 12 pounds is a lot, if you are looking to shed weight but for a road car, it’s not that big a deal, might even improve the balance, who knows. The original had a big cast iron lump back there
.
I know some builders really want the alloy case but I am told they are a bit trickier to set up as the case needs to be stretched open to set the side load, I had to do it to even get the carrier out. When it’s time to build up the differential for real I will give it more thought.
So that’s about it, the case physically fits in the space as I thought it would, it’s tight but it fits.
With my rear mounting plate stack up I might need to switch to a stamped steel rear cover but until it’s really mounted up solid I won’t know for sure but at least I have the option.
Hopefully next time I will have more to report about all that.
Stay well and happy my friends!
Hudson
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