So i have a couple of side shift cad/lasalle tranys im playing with doing the early ford closed drive swap, the thing im wondering........ If im doing the retainer/rear plate swap why couldnt a guy use a f1 open drive bearing reatainer/rear plate and make the cadi trans open drive? beats having to find the olds tailshat and housing? should work right? jeff
Yup. The problem will be finding someone to cut those splines without having to anneal the output shaft. Which may or may not be a problem depending on what you are putting it behind. I only say this since Tuck and I were discussing doing this exact thing sometime last year. I ended up talking to a local guy (genius with early transmission swapping) about doing this for my F1 and he mentioned possible problems with the splines.
I have a buddy already lined up to cut the splines in the shaft. He said no problem. Why would he have to aneal it? Im sure his tooling will be hard enought to cut the main shaft if thats what you mean. JEFF
The cad/Lasalle trans is open drive as long as your rear pinion has the yoke, run open drive. early Ford trucks are open drive right, tapered pinion? thats what I'm doing but with the shorter 37' top shift transmission.
All I can tell you is what I was told when I showed this guy a Ford output shaft and asked if he could cut those splines into the LaSalle output.
Well ill be the guinea pig, i would assume shortening and puting splines on a trans output shaft would be the same as shortening rear axles and resplining. I have a project that im gonna put an olds in with a cadi side shift and its got an olds rear in it already so i need open drive, so ill give it a whirl and see how it goes. JEFF
I had a 37 floorshift Cad/Lasalle that had been converted by Lou Sales(Manchester Transmission) years back and was set up for the torque tube style rear mount and the closed style ford u-joint with the ball. It doesn't seem that would be too difficult for a machinist to cut and re-spline the cad to early ford open style. I believe the ford truck open style spline was the same as early chevy 3 speeds 55-64 . Most those output shafts were faily mild material with a case harden,with todays tooling it may cut easily once thru the case but may have to be hardened again for wear.
If the shafts are case hardened, they'll need to be rehardened after cutting...as for tooling, any TiN coated carbide or ceramic insert style cutters should easily cut the splines...I'm more worried about whether or not the shafts are thru hardened or case hardened than if the tooling is tough enough...I used to machine all kinds of hardened tool steel daily in the moldmaking industry, and believe me, the tooling isn't an issue these days...hell, if I had a mill, rotary indexer and an insert cutter I'd do it for you...I miss doing fun stuff like that...
Any update titus? I have a '53 LaSalle sideloader sitting around and am interested about your progress.
yes the issue is not in the cutting it is that it will need hardening after the cut not a big deal if you know what you are doing or so my machinist told me before he cut a late output shaft to '50 Olds dimensions for me no trouble after about a year of beating on it with a blown 303 so I tend to believe him.
Sorry no updates, was and still is a no rush project but as soon as it happens ill let everyone know. JEFF
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