Hi all. The Kurtis Tommy Lee Special started out life with a LaSalle (top-shift) transmission. At some point the LaSalle tranny was discarded and an old Ford truck transmission was installed in its place. We'd like to put the correct transmission back in but had some questions about the configuration. Hopefully the experts here will be able to answer them... Any pictures posted here and elsewhere of a LaSalle transmission shows an extended output shaft housing and u-joint flange. The TLS has a torque tube style drive train. Since the torque tube is original to the car (or at least the configuration), the original LaSalle tranny must have bolted to the torque tube. I can't see this happening unless the output shaft extension comes off and the torque tube bolts up in its place. Is this possible? Are there shorter output shafts available for the LaSalle tranny? Thanks for helping us wrap our heads around this...
The Lasalle trans is longer than a Ford trans, so if somebody substituted the Ford, they also put in a longer torquetube. The most common way to install them back in the old days was to remove the tail housing from the Lasalle and modify the trans to bolt up to the torquetube. Search "Lasalle transmission" on here and you will find posts with tech articles showing the modifications needed to put the Ford U-joint and clamshell on the back of the Lasalle trans. I have an article in an ancient mag (somewhere) that shows it being done with chalk and a hacksaw. A bit of precision work will be required on the respline of the output shaft though.
The Cad/LaSalle transmissions were indeed modified to work with the Ford torque tube driveline. The method I have seen involved installing the rear mount/u-joint housing housing of the Ford transmission onto the C/L trans main case by drilling the C/L case for the Ford bolt pattern. Then, shortening and resplining the main shaft to the required length and Ford U-joint spline. While it does require some machine work, it is a fairly simple adaptation.
Dale......if you need any assistance locally, contact us, as Brant(Flashback58)is getting pretty good at working on torque tubes......
I think I might know where there is one of those transmissions adapted to a Ford torque tube. If you get back to me, I'll go look for it.
Whoa...dredging up a 3 year-old thread. Thanks again for all the info and offers to help. At this point the car is not being driven and likely won't be driven appreciably in the foreseeable future. Those of you who know where the car is will understand why that is. We've got plenty of other projects at the moment but may come back to it at some point.
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