by "Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
Published 06/05/2017 at 11:56
by "Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
Published 06/05/2017 at 11:56
Tags: project car
; mustang
; ford
; fox body
; pizza delivery mustang
STARS: 17
It is written in the Book of Car Guys right alongside “LS swap it” that a manual transmission is just somehow
better
than an automatic. The snickt-snickt of the gears, flawlessly executing a heel-toe downshift as you throw the car into the next turn of the Wendy’s drive-through, watching the revs rise in sync with your speedometer instead of lazily floating around the converter stall point, the brief moment of silence where the exhaust calms down and the vibrations stop as you push the clutch in, select the next gear, and unleash the dogs of war once more. These are counted highly among Things That I Like and so I took it upon myself to replace the aging, broken C3 automatic transmission in my 1986 Fox body Mustang with a 1995 T5 manual.
Like this story? Read it and more like it on Fast Not Lou d, a long-form occasionally-updated blog about things with engines
Here’s what I bought. $160 got my a T5 transmission out of an SN95 Mustang (this is important later) with the appropriate 3.8 liter V6 bellhousing, flywheel, and clutch all delivered in the back of a rusty Honda Accord. I was quite surprised how small this trans is. It’s rather the compact thing and is light enough for a single person to carry it.
For those not familiar, this is the chosen victim. My 1986 notchback “four-eye” Mustang LX. With a 3-speed automatic and a throttle-body-injected 3.8 liter V6 from the dark days of the Malaise era this is no drag strip dominator, nor is the live rear axle and sloppy four-link suspension going to result in an autocross cone killer any time soon either. Clearly, something must be done to liven it up.
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Aside from just replacing the chunk of metal that makes the car move there is a critical addition to the interior that must be made: a third pedal. Unfortunately you can’t crawl under the dash bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with a clutch pedal in hand and bolt it to the firewall. Oh no. Here’s step 1:
Drop the steering column, realize it’s hanging up on all of the car’s super-rigged wiring for the stereo, destroy half of the wiring and then remove the column.
Four bolts under the dash and then a whole bunch of 30 year old plastic connectors that I attempted to gently remove at first and then began hitting with a hammer and chisel. Swollen plastic. Never again.
Upper dash must be removed and the gauge cluster pulled out so the speedometer cable can be pulled out into the engine bay. The grommet the speedo cable passes through on automatic cars is where the clutch cable has to go so it needs to be re-routed. A long extension assists with getting four bolts on the firewall free and then you find someone with more upper body strength to wiggle the pedalbox out of the car.
Lonely single sadness on the left, happy couple on the right. “Simply” toss it back into the car, which is 2 hours of swearing and struggling in this super dignified position:
Then take a quick glance at your pile of interior
Luckily Ford seems to do a decent job of making things come apart easily. Most of the time. Which is good because there is quite a lot that needs to come out.
Once the pedals are back in it only took a half hour or so to get the steering column back together and in the car, after which I checked to make sure all the relevant electronics and switchgear still worked. I also found a bolt in the steering column on the underside that has the head in the center that attaches a large chunk of plastic that holds the tilt mechanism to the metal column. I noticed the whole steering assembly was wiggling at that point so I got an open-ended wrench and tightened it an eighth of a turn at a time until I got it tight. Boom. No more bouncing steering wheel. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of this.
Four nuts later and the column is back in the car All of the plugs go back in far easier than they came out.
uh yeah just gonna shove that up above the column and ignore it
Suddenly boom the car is on a lift. And honestly for a 30 year old car that spent years sitting in a field in Kansas this is pretty impressively free of major rust.
There is quite a lot of oil though.
This was the only “real” rust in the whole undercarriage, and this wasn’t even soft just some surface rust around this drain plug thing.
Upon going to remove the exhaust we noticed the nuts on the exhaust flange were impossible to get to. Who would design such a thing? Nobody. Turns out the engine was sitting a few inches to the passenger side. Here is a motor mount:
Here is an ex-motor-mount
Fabulous. We jacked up the engine enough to get the bolt and wrestled the exhaust out in one piece, which is probably good because there isn’t really anywhere it can come apart (don’t even bother with the slip fittings, that magic isn’t happening).
At this point the sun started peeking through the rainclouds so I took a moment to appreciate how incredibly humid it was and wipe the sweat off my brow, replacing it with a nice streak of black gunk.
Spent the next few hours undoing impossible to get to bolts and spilling ATF everywhere. Eventually you’ll be rewarded with an absurdly heavy lump of metal.
Climb back into the car and angrily unbolt the automatic shifter and throw it at the wall as hard as possible. Ponder why it didn’t so much as crack and reevaluate your thoughts on 80s plastics durability.
Much room for activities.
Spend 5 years jiggling the transmission around trying to get it to slip through the clutch into the pilot bearing and then realize the stupid debris shield thing has slipped slightly and is blocking the trans. Cry deeply and start bolting up the bellhousing again. Spend two years trying to fit the 1986 starter into a 1995 bellhousing before realizing no idiot that won’t work you need a ‘95 starter . Wonder what parts stores are open at 11pm before realizing the only store open is an Autozone that gets robbed biweekly in the part of town that people usually go to great lengths to avoid. Realize your Miata doesn’t have enough room for the amount of guns necessary for defense, steel your nerves, and clown-car your happy asses to Autozone to fork over far too much money for a Duralast starter with a lifetime warranty which is immediately voided by hacking up the wiring to make it work with the existing external solenoid.
Another thing I forgot to take pictures of was the trans mount. Every tutorial for this mentions having to cut and weld stuff. It’s not necessary. The crossbrace can remain completely stock but you will notice that it is 2-3 inches forward of where the mount on the transmission is. Luckily my manual had a plate with two sets of holes where the upper part of the mount bolts to. Simply unbolt the rubber mount (which has two studs facing downward that sit in the crossbrace) and slide it forward and bolt it to the forward set of bolt holes. Boom. It all lines up brilliantly. Once the trans was mounted up we noticed that the shift fork was rubbing on the exhaust a bit, so another several hours was spent using all manner of tools to provide clearance before the car could be taken on a test drive. Once that was finished and deemed adequate the finishing touch was added.
Store bought shifters are lame.
So how was it? Well, at first the car wouldn’t pull itself until I figured out how to use the self-adjusting clutch pedal (pull up on the pedal with your toe), and then the clutch would engage properly and I could back out of the garage. The huge hole in the center console where a shift boot could be let in all manner of fun noises from the engine bay but the car shifted through all the relavent gears impressively smoothly and I was even able to competently heel-toe downshift it my first few tries. The speedometer is wildly inaccurate but at roughly 80mph the car is doing about 1900rpm and pulls much harder than it used to in first gear. The clutch, while heavy due to being cable-actuated, is incredibly forgiving and the car as a whole is very easy to drive and feels very solid now with the repaired steering column.
Next up: DIY panhard bar.
"RiceRocketeer Extraordinaire" (ricerocketeer2)
06/05/2017 at 12:02, STARS: 2
I’m breaking out in hives just looking at that steering column wiring. Ugh.
"My bird IS the word" (mybirdistheword)
06/05/2017 at 12:18, STARS: 3
No such thing as a “simple” swap. Anyone who says so is a liar.
"Urambo Tauro" (urambotauro)
06/05/2017 at 12:26, STARS: 2
Good work! This calls for some Eurobeat:
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"Chariotoflove" (chariotoflove)
06/05/2017 at 12:26, STARS: 2
Either you lied to me or the glue gun worked, because your arm is clearly attached.
Also, you are insane. Carry on.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
06/05/2017 at 12:31, STARS: 4
My girlfriend is into cosplay. She has some ridiculous glue guns.
"Chariotoflove" (chariotoflove)
06/05/2017 at 12:33, STARS: 1
Bet she would enjoy that SciFi channel show Face Off .
"Tristan" (casselts)
06/05/2017 at 13:20, STARS: 0
I manual swapped my ‘93 4 cyl fox body. It was easy and took and afternoon.
I manual swapped my Jeep Cherokee... That was a pain in the ass, but so worth it.
"sony1492" (sony1492)
06/05/2017 at 13:31, STARS: 1
Manual swaps are life, great read.
"yamahog" (yamahog)
06/05/2017 at 14:04, STARS: 3
+1 star for quality kinja, I laughed far too loud at the Wendy’s drive thru bit
Also thank u for following our crosspost guidelines :)
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
06/05/2017 at 14:19, STARS: 1
I’ll be honest: I didn’t realize we had crosspost guidelines.
"yamahog" (yamahog)
06/05/2017 at 14:44, STARS: 1
Lol at least they’re fairly intuitive then I guess. But yea, established community members are more than welcome to put links to their outside blogs as long as the whole post is here too.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
06/05/2017 at 14:46, STARS: 1
yay, I’m established :D
"daender" (daender)
06/05/2017 at 19:32, STARS: 3
You crazy bastard, well done on the conversion and an excellent write-up to boot! Now just don’t put it into a ditch, three states away from home, after you pull an all-nighter replacing a broken 8.8 with another 8.8 from a junkyard GT.
/me is forever in disbelief at his roommate for doing that to his Stang
"shop-teacher" (shop-teacher)
06/05/2017 at 20:23, STARS: 0
How many pints of blood did you need when you were done?
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
06/05/2017 at 20:23, STARS: 0
Did a transfusion. I’m now 50% ATF.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
06/05/2017 at 20:24, STARS: 0
I don’t think it has enough power to end up in a ditch if I’m honest. Now I just need to do a bunch of annoying fiddly stuff to finish it up like putting the dash back together, hooking the speedo up, getting a new shift bushing and lower shift boot, etc. etc. etc. etc. ugh I’m gonna put that off for a few daysweeksmonthsyears.
"shop-teacher" (shop-teacher)
06/05/2017 at 20:27, STARS: 0
You must do great burnouts now!
"daender" (daender)
06/05/2017 at 20:41, STARS: 0
It wasn’t power, it was carrying too much speed on a twisty mountain road he should not have been going fast on in the first place (his first time enthusiastically driving in the mountains). He hit gravel that was on the outside of a corner and it basically went straight-forward off the turn and right into a boulder.
Get the speedo working and gear shift bushing done first. Dash can wait as long as its drive-able otherwise. I don’t know if CL hunting or junkyard hunting could net you a good lower shift boot that’s not already torn up.
"wiffleballtony" (wiffleballtony)
06/05/2017 at 22:05, STARS: 0
I’d love to swap the transmission on my car, this affirms that there’d be no way to do it myself.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
06/06/2017 at 01:02, STARS: 0
If I eat enough spicy food I leave a great skid mark.
"Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To" (murdersofa)
06/06/2017 at 01:04, STARS: 1
eh, I can get the lower boot and shift bushin for $30 or so total from Late Model Restoration. Speedo is a factor of just figuring out a cable routing that gives it enough length to actually reach the cluster. Then the dashboard is just four screws away from being together.
"84cfiguy" (84cfiguy)
05/30/2020 at 21:15, STARS: 0
Hey there Jake Im seriously into your swap, how has it been so far three years down the road? I have an 84 CFI 5.0 i wanna manual swap, i here it makes it idle funny, but i dont think i believe that. going to get into it this weekend