We want to do a tranny and torque tube swap on my brother's 50 Chevy Fleetine. Already have a rear end out of a 57 Chev prepped and ready to bolt in. He wants to repalce the 3 speed with a newer version, to keep the column shift. Will a 3 speed out of a tri 5 work? I think the linkage should be straight forward, not sure about the bellhousing.
Truck bell or '55-'62 car bell for a later open drive transmission. You'll be fabricating mounts since you're going to an open rear anyway; '55-'57 bell will have side mount provisions. You may as well use a '66 or newer Saginaw three speed and get the luxury of a stronger gearset not to mention syncro low gear. They're cheap, or sometimes free.
Just throwing something totaly diferent in here. If your doing fab work anyway.... why not a 4 speed? Like a M21? Use the column shifter linkage for the forward gear levers on the side cover. The reverse position on the column handle will be used for 1st gear, pull down for 2nd gear, shift up for 3rd gear and back down to 4th. Back in the day, Rig up a choke lever and place the column shifter in the neutral position and push/pull the knob for reverse. Depending on the vehicle and the shifter linkage, it may be necessary to use a length of 3/8 steel rod to fabricate one or both shifter rods from the shift box on the column down to the shifter arm on the side cover. The only real kink in this whole conversion might be if the original 3sp shifter selector box on the column has a lot of slop/wear. Just a Rum induced idea................
you don't HAVE to. just drill new holes in the pads to move the rear back (1.75" iirc) and with an adapter plate, you can keep the stock bellhousing and run a t5. which you really should do. why go to all that trouble for the SAME performance? http://www.stovebolt.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=80367 http://www.stovebolt.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=830254
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