Somebody wants to know if the Ford manual OD trans I have will work in a T-bird. It's an OD I bought loose marked '57 Ford. Anybody know if there's any real difference in the transmissions in these cars or where I can try to find some info on them? I can't find the other pictures of this right now but here's one.
Hollanders is a bit confusing, but shows there are differences between the years, and between Ford and T bird applications. You probably need to do some eyeballing...might check the U joint and output splines and yoke, rear mount, and shifter mounting locations to be sure it will work. Tbirds were floor shift, pass cars were column shift. edit: also check the input splines, I think the 57 had coarse splines, that may be a later transmission?
I have two Ford OD transmissions, the other one we never figured out what exactly it's for. It's not a toploader like this one, it has a case with a rounded shape to it. The one I posted first is just marked "Ford 57" on the face of it, so I presume it was removed from a '57 Ford. I got them at a salvage yard auction where they'd been just pulling parts and chucking them in busses and vans for years - no tags, no inventory, just stuff. Sometimes hilarously mis-labeled - someone must have cobbed whatever radio was handy into his truck, and they pulled it and marked it '68 GMC even though the radio said Chrysler across the face.
I think the top loader was a mid 60s design, the other one is more like what you'd find in a 57 ford. look for numbers, they may or may not help. If it has a number like C4AP... the C means 1960s, etc. The 50s stuff usually has the funky 3 letter codes, at least on the engine parts.
The top one looks like the one I had in a 57 Ford and the bottom one looks like the one I had in a 56 Ford. I think the top loader style started in 57 but I am certainly no expert.
I think the first pic is what Squirrel said....a '60s era trans. I had one that looked exactly like that from a '63 Galaxie. I also had a trans like the second pic, from my '50 Ford. Both were marked as WG T-86, the light/medium duty trans used by Ford and other makers over several decades. Early T-birds may have used the T-86 units in some applications, but I believe 312 'Birds got the heavier duty WG T-85 gearbox which is readily distinguished by the downward curve of the lower edge of the side cover. That side cover looks just like the WG T-10 four speed because the T-85 is what the T-10 was derived from. The T-85 was also widely used in the '50s and '60s by various makers.....Lincoln, Mercury, Ford, Pontiac among them. Ray Coleman
The top picture looks like the factory gearbox from my 55 sedan, except it has a different spline. They were the light duty trans, used in Fords, Studebaker, Willies. The Heavy duty OD had a side cover with a curved bottom on the cover. The straight bottom side cover was in between.
The fine spline (23 splines) input shaft did not appear until 1958 model year. The first pic with the 23 splines is a T-86 overdrive trans.....common on six cyl and small V8's up thru at least 1962.
I don't have any '55 info, but according to pictures and text, the '56 shop manual states conventional side-load 3-speed transmissions were used in all cars except police interceptors, which used a top-load 3-speed that was basically the same as all OD 3-speeds. The '57 manual states all cars used side-load conventional 3-speeds, but the OD transmissions were top-load for conventional cars and side-load for T-Birds.
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