Technical Ford 200 six final gear question

Well, I’ll chime in. I have a 200 cubic in six in a 1960 model van with a top loader three speed with overdrive. The rear gears are 4.11 and it has 14 inch wheels, with stock size tires. It is perfectly geared with that combo! Has zip around town, in direct, will eat up the highway at 75 mph with ease with two motorcycles in it!

4:11x. 75 = 3.08 I think the overdrive is .75, if not it’s close.








Bones

 

The 144 engines all had the tiny bellhousing pattern so far as I know, and the late '60s 200 engines had that and also a bigger pattern.

I seem to recall reading that the late 200s had the 6 bolt small block pattern, but didn't use one bolt.

 

I suspect that was because you live in the flatlands... Around here with all the hills and mountains, stick cars had 3.25/3.5 gears as common, even 3.7 if behind a six. The taller gears were usually reserved for automatics which had the advantage of torque multiplication in the convertor.

Bones, if that was a BW overdrive (and would have been if OEM), the OD was .7.

 

That very well could be....

 

Yup. I use 2.47 gears in my RPU drag car. It has a big Ford six and runs high 11s. It will hook in a vomit covered mud slide and is real easy on valvetrain parts.

 

Desmodromic,I take it from your user name your either a big fan of Deusenbergs or an opponent of valve springs.

 

Since he referred to it as a toploader 3spd w/OD I suspect it is one of the variations of RUG type from the late 70's early 80's,a BW electric OD in a Ford would be attached to a T-85 or T-86 BW 3 spd which are both side load cases.The RUG type OD trans was the one based on a modified Toploader 4 speed case,available with side shift for use with a remote shifter and turret mount shifter that was part of the tailhousing.they also supposedly made one with topshift cover and trans case adapter that was used in bronco's.

 

The transmission came out a 1957 Ford. I fairly sure it was a top loaded three speed , I know it had the over drive added behind. It’s not one of the four speed top loaded overdrives. I do have one of those under my work bench. I can’t really look at it right now.







Bones

 

There were some BW trans that that were side shift but had a 6 bolt top cover they're about the size of the T-86 and used the smaller OD that the T-86 used but I don't know if they were called T-86's.They were a lighter duty trans. than the T-85 and were usually more common in 6 cylinder cars.

 

Ford used three different OD trans in the '50s. One was a Ford-built side loader with a R10 OD attached and was the light-duty version. This one was more common in the early '50s and disappeared well before the end of the decade. The medium-duty was the T86, a top load design also with a R10 OD. This was used across the line behind both sixes and the smaller V8s up to the 292. The T85 side loader was the heavy duty option and used in the T-bird, police, truck and taxi applications as well as the 'performance' versions. This could have either the R10 or R11 OD depending on application. The R11 versions are fairly rare, or at least seemed to be around here.

The T86 was the most common one from my experience.

 

All of the T-85's that I've ever had were the R-11 OD unit but they were all 57 and later Fairlane/Galaxie or short tail truck and from what I understand they were used clear back into the 40's for some applications.That clears up a lot for the light duty trans as I have seen some marked with a Ford number and some with a BW number which was probably just whether I looked at the main case or OD housing.Most I have seen was in someones scrap pile or junk car and to be honest my only interest was to see if it was a T-85 as soon as I saw it didn't have the curved bottom side cover I didn't have much interest in it any more. Was the ford built trans used behind the flathead or was it six cylinder only?Was the T-85 used behind the merc flathead?Its the same on this side of the mountains it seems like for every R11 you see there are 5 or more R10's,but if your making decent power you definitely want the stronger planetary of the R11.BTW do you have any insight on the reason for the super long tailshaft on some of the mid 50's T-85's.

 

The Ford/R10 OD trans was used in most all cars (including the merc) until about '51, then started fading away. I don't recall seeing one in anything newer than '54 although I was told by an old Ford dealer mechanic that you would find them in cheapo fleet type cars until about '56. Most got the T86, which wasn't a bad trans, it just didn't suffer abuse gladly. It's main failing was weak syncros; if you speed-shifted it a lot, the syncros would fail. The T85 was seen mainly in trucks until about '55 when the car power got high enough to warrant it.

No idea on the 'super long' tailshaft, all of them were pretty long I thought.

 

The car T-85's did have a pretty long tail shaft compared to the later truck versions,but there were some that were 4-6" longer then even the car versions.There were also some non OD trans that were way longer too,I had heard they were Lincoln but I would have thought that by the mid 50's they would have been automatics.

 

French That is really hard to believe. Even with a torquey engine a 2.47 rear at the drags would be hard to get out of 2nd gear or launch at all unless you have a trans with an extremely low 1st gear.
2.47’s are a Bonneville gear and I’ve run a 2.56 gear with a 30” tire, 4 speed, 75% nitro, 6 cylinder with a 4” stroke, and had to push it to 40 mph+ for it not to bog... just sayin’

 

Duesenberg dabbled a little with desmodromics, but that was not their normal valve train architecture. It's been around since the 19teens; Mercedes used it in their Grand Prix and Sports/Racers in the '50s.

Most, if not all, desmodromics had valve springs; I may be the only exception.

Modern Formula 1 engines don't have valve springs, but they aren't desmodromics.

Actually, while pregnant with me, my mom rode a Ducati.