you are sooo right. i want to get rid of that ugly S15 shifter but i don't give a diddly about a the speedo. i thought about trying to shit-rig a wireless, bicycle speedometer/odometer to one of my tires. lol... i'll just install a tach and guess my mileage. that old odometer was worthless anyway. i "fixed" it with a numbers set from a 94 CB1000 that i parted out but they eventually went screwy again. i would have stuck with the orig number set but when you handle them the painted numbers come off. no more of that crap for me.
Just run a tach and run the numbers to calibrate. As accurate as a speedo, and it tells you allot more of whats going on under the hood. I've done a couple of hundred thousand miles with the Plymouth like that.
I did that on an old OT Mustang, it worked accurately enough and kept me from getting MORE tickets. I had someone drive next to me and honk their horn at 30, 30, 50, 60 & 70 MPH. I marked the tach with a sharpie and later added some masking tape tags with the MPH on them. With the 3.91 rear and tall tires it roughly worked out to be 80 MPH @ 4000 RPM, 60 MPH @ 3000 RPM and so on. Bob
Nice going, you stuck with it and never quit. FWIW, it was your money and nobody elses' business how it got spent, unless they were chipping it they had no say in the matter. Success teaches you nothing, never forget that. You learned a lot in the process and will help you down the road. I realize you're a young guy with relatively little experience, tools and other resources. But you now have one bitchin' SMOOTH running ride that we'd all be glad to own. Bob
HHMMNNN, lets see, If I'm on the freeway in 5th gear and the tach says 2200, I'm going 75. If the tach says 2000 and I'm in 3rd gear I'm going 35. Tach says 2000 in fourth gear, I'm going just a shade over 45. Really not too tough. Ya gotta do the math though. MPH x TRANS RATIO x REAR GEAR RATIO X 336 = xxxx DIVIDE THIS BY TIRE HEIGHT. Done. My car: 75 x .68 x 3.23 x 336 = 55349.28 DIVIDED BY 26.6 = 2080 rpm. Figure this ONE time for 35, 45, 75, or what ever common speed limits you have and your done. The GPS would a good way to go as well, but I can't freekin stand having wires and stuff sitting on my seat. Drives me bananas.
Electronic speedo out put, mechanical speedo. My system is normality to me I guess. I just do the math in my head when I change rear gears out (pretty frequent), I just change stuff around so often that it just never dawned on me to do it any other way. Hell, I did the math on the girlfriends Mercedes when it came home, and I drive off the tach in that too...
but if it's a mechanical output (i wouldn't think '89 had electronic output...but I could be wrong) aren't there ways to re-gear the speedo cable to spin the correct revs?
As I mentioned before, to convert from a VSS to cable drive, you can buy a converter box from Cable-X for $320, or go with one of these for about $150 http://www.dragonaero.com/SpeedChangerMechanicalPage.htm I have not personnally used either...
I don't know that much about T5s, really. Snarl knows a helluva lot more than I do and if you're tearing down 100 a year, you know shit-tons more than I do. While I do have a fair bit of experience with them, I don't count myself a guru by any stretch...and I seem to get a lot of credit for collating info... Regarding oil - the NWC originally used 70WT gear oil - I could give you the Ford P/N out of an '83 Mustang Manual, but don't have it handy anymore. It's my belief (belief only) that some of the factory recommendations for ATF in NWC trannys stemmed from convenience more than anything - a single oil for a family of transmissions. Over the years, I've seen folks run just about everything in T5s. I now run synthetic ATF - even in NWC T5...but the most correct answer is 70WT oil (if you can find it).
thanks bob! i put the floor back together today but still have a lot of work to do. i need to put something down then carpet or a rubber matt. that IDIOT mechanic cut out a piece of the floor unnecessarily. i sprayed the floor pan edges with spray tar before screwing them down and the areas that still had big gaps i filled with foam weatherstrip. i then sealed everything with silicone. the shifter boot is just resting on the floor until i can get some sound deadener and carpet down. i have to make a trip to home depot and see what they have. snarl: i'll check out that link to see if i can get my speedo working. thanks! judd: i like that shifter but it's not long enough. i may have to make one out of a piece of rod. i want it tall! mustangsix: i was thinking that they should make a speedo / odometer setup like a bicycle. just put a sensor on your wheel and dial in the tire size then mount it wirelessly on your steering column like a tach. i gotta research this... here's my floor for now. at least it's no longer blowing hot air into the cab.
earnie: if 70w were common i'd try it. for now sticking with ATF and will just change it often. i think that the 70w will probably protect better in a hot climate and the ATF is probably better for up north. the damned manufacturer should give us an oil/temp chart like they have for LAWNMOWERS.
i run atf in my 49 coupe with a t5 , its real fast and it was 103 today DRIVE THE TRUCK AND QUIT WHINING YOU KNOW SO LITTLE TO KNOW SO MUCH ATF FLUID OK
My '62 and '64 Olds' both ran off the LF spindle. The cable ran through the center of the spindle and the square end of the cable was retained by a mating square drive in the grease cap. Not sure what the last year them ran them that way. Bob
Wow did you have troubles with your swap! I did this 2 years ago after 6 months researching - and yes Flat Ernie is the guru of T5 info. My then 14 year-old and I did the T5 swap in an unheated garage in the middle of an Alberta winter with no power tools or hoist and we never had a quarter of the problems you had using a "professional" My Acadian speedo cable works with my '86 Camaro trans and it's even accurate! My swap and pictures are here: http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2390467/12 Even pictures of the Allen head bolts. .
Can't do that on an S10 T5. Its either one or the other, you can't switch them without changing the tailhousing. Been over this a thousand times....
that's what i'm doing but with that 235 and hills, i'm having a difficult time keeping it in 5th. but a strange thing happened today after i reinstalled the floorpan and bolted it tight. the vibration came back but not as bad as before but the same vibration. i stopped, unbolted the pan it it was much better. my theory is that the pan is pushing down on the top of the trans creating an angle issue. conversly, if i push up slightly on the trans, it should be fine. i'm going to crawl back under there and do just that later today.
lol... not so fast. when the floor pan pushed down on the trans the vibration came back but not nearly as bad as when the trans was loose. i loosened the floor pan bolts and it got much better. so -as posted above- in a bit, i'm going to put just a tad of pressure underneath to change ever so slightly the angle and see how it goes.
el gordo: thanks for that link. i'm going to save it as a PDF to my hard drive. today i found a ford? T5 at the scrap metal yard but the gears were binding. i may go back and pull off the topcover and have a look inside tomorrow. it's a 1342-246
<TABLE class=yiv1980868811yiv1008348984ecxbody-estext border=1 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=2><TBODY><TR bgColor=#d9eeeb><TD>Ford 1994 Mustang 5.0 V8 WC </TD><TD>Y</TD><TD>3.15</TD><TD>3.35</TD><TD>1.99</TD><TD>1.33</TD><TD>1.00</TD><TD>0.68</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE> This is the Ford 246 tranny you just got. Better 1st gear 3.35 instead of about 4.16 like the one you have. This 246 World Class is stronger and has better syncros. On the bad side it has a rear mounted shifter, shifter will hit the seat. You can swap your old s-10 tail shaft onto it to keep the shifter location you have now. That's more hastle though, that you don't need . The big problem is it's a ford bolt pattern not Chevy. It won't bolt to your 62 Chevy bellhousing. The WC guts won't fit in the s-10 main case either. Oh and the input shaft is an inch longer than the one in your truck. That is a great tranny but not for your truck.
The Jalopy Journal
