Whos's got an overdrive 4 speed for sale? Come on, caugh it up!

<A HREF="mailto:Richard-c@e-d-a.com">Richard-c@e-d-a.com</A>

Richard-c@e-d-a.com

If your car is an A-Body and you do not mind a little extra work the long tail shaft OD tranny is common in bone yard D100 pickups and Vans.

I got one from an 80 D100 pickup with the bell housing, shifter, clutch and flywheel for $75.00. The drive shaft will need to be shortened 3+ inches (forget the exact measurement) and you will need to fabricate a custom mounting plate for the shifter to get it into the correct position. I have the unit I got in my 68 Barracuda.

Of course if you have a B, C or E body this is the correct tranny and will drop in.

Dave Clement

Hot-Rod 6
dave.clement@motorola.com

doug said it was a pain, look below you will see I was trying to get rid of my van long tail od. Maybe I should change my mind. Doug said there was quite a lot of crossmember work

The B / E "long tail" 833 4 speed will put the front shifter location right into the heavy steel cross member / torsion bar support on an A-body chassis.

All the "guts" can be swapped into the A-Body case so you may want to do that.
DD

er doug, I think you might be.... dare I say it.... incorrect!

I tried that already, thats why I have TWO dismantled tranies! The ouput shaft on hte OD is c different diameter so the cluster doesn't fit. The OD takes a yoke, and the 66 takes ball and trunion. Besides I would prefer the aluminum case, I can bench press that one. I am not woried about a shifter relocation plate. I am worried about fabbing a crossmember, and not that I can't do it, just that you said I would be better off finding an early model OD with ball and trunion. Anyway, obviously no-one wants my super six, drop me a line, you have some cast iron coming.


richard-c@e-d-a.com

On my 68 Barracuda only the front top boss of the front shifter location interfered with the cross member. I just took the old sawsall and cut it off along with about 1/2 of the web between the two top bosses. That gave my over a 1/4" of clearance. I could also have dented the corner of the cross member to get adequate clearance but cutting the boss off was much easier.

Dave Clement

Hot-Rod 6
dave.clement@motorola.com

Actually it took about a minute to cut the boss that interferes with the cross member with a sawsall. The interference was not much and the cross member could have been dented to provide the clearance also.

Again that's all it took with my 68 Barracuda so it would be the same for any 67-76 A-body. Don't know if the dimensions would be different in this area on an early A-body or not.

Dave Clement

Hot-Rod 6
dave.clement@motorola.com

As we see, there are a number of ways to get this to work.

Question for Dave on getting the B,C,E body "long tail" 833 into the A body, you sawed-off part of the front shifter pad to clear the crossmember, then used the E body shifter mounting position at the end of that longer tailhousing, right?
If true, you used the E-Body shift rods. I would think doing this would put the shifter about 5 inches further back from the A-Body location and you needed to fab-up a special bolt-in crossmember. (trans. mount bolt holes are further back?) Is that what you saw on your 68 B'cuda?
What did the floor hump end-up being and did the shifter / stick clear your front seat? (buckets) Were you able to use a factory stick?

As for swapping tailhousings, I would have pulled both tailhousings / mainshaft assemblies (output shaft)
Unloaded all the gears / syncrow hubs and swapped them over to the other mainshaft / tailhousing as a set.
With this combo, you would have to use the cast iron tailhousing with the flange type mainshaft and bolt that assy. to the alm. case with the OD's input and cluster gear still in it. Is this what you tried? Did you find that the two mainshafts had different journal sizes which would prevent the gears / syncrow hubs from swapping-over?

Keep the info. flowing here, this is good stuff on what you can and can not do with the 833.
You will never find this type of "hands-on, make it work" swap-over info. in any service manual!
DD

Correct!
:
: If true, you used the E-Body shift rods. I
: would think doing this would put the shifter
: about 5 inches further back from the A-Body
: location and you needed to fab-up a special
: bolt-in crossmember. (trans. mount bolt
: holes are further back?) Is that what you
: saw on your 68 B'cuda?

I fabricated from 1/2" alumium plate a shifter mount that attached to the E-Body mount and positioned the shifter forward to the normal A-Body position and used A-Body rods. The idea for mounting the shifter this way came from the pick-up that the tranny came from. The shifter was mounted on a 3/8" piece of cold roll steel about 5" above and 3" behind the front mount. The 1/2" plate is stiffer than the steel but does have some flex that may not be acceptable to someone that is banging the gears hard. There is enough room to add some webbing to my mount to stiffen it but it's ok as is for me.

All A833's regardless of application have the transmission mounting pad in the same location in respect to the front mounting surface of the tranny (from Mopar Muscle). I just transfered the Tranny mount from the 3-speed to the A883 and everthing dropped right into place once the boss that interfered with the cross member was cut off.
:
: What did the floor hump end-up being and did
: the shifter / stick clear your front seat?
: (buckets) Were you able to use a factory
: stick?

I used a standard A-body hump from a Dart. The shifter handle is a generic handle from a Hurst Competion Plus shifter. This handle would not be usable with the bench seat if I needed to have the seat forward on it's tracks. It's about 3/4's of the way back. I have been looking for a handle that bends forward and to the right immediately out of the shifter before bending up and back to give me a little more leg room.

I do not have a real good shot of the interior but this picture shows the shifter in relation to the bench seat.

All in all this was not a bad swap. The van and pickup trannies are much much cheaper than the A/F-body 4-spds and even factoring in the cost of cutting and balancing the the driver shaft it was still less than 1/2 the average cost of the short tail shaft tranny.


dave.clement@motorola.com

Thanks Dave,
This all makes sense including the mount position, I was thinking about the 904 vs 727 mount position difference. . .opps

I will send you an email, maybe you can send me that PIC or we can find a way around the yahoo "firewall" so we can get the PIC to post.
DD

My turn
yes the journals were a different diameter, and the splines were differnt too. they are both in bitz downstairs, maybe you should come over SOON, get your cast iron, and we can look at those two before I ship off the 4 speed guts. I like the van peice and my guys at san leandreo average $90 a drive shaft (they did the subby custom too. $90 including the whole pipe, four and a half feet!!!) I grabed the Yoke for the OD whilst I was at it. All the guts in the cases will interchange, exept gota use shaft specific tail housings, and in my case, gota use gear ratio or year specific shafts.
The shifter shafts don't scare me, and I am not afrais to put the OD back together. It's when Doug says it's a pain in the but, I taks his word! Lets igure this one out. My goal is to have OD and a taller posi rear. Not in a hurry though. (Oh yeah, and a tougher clutch. tee hee)
Hands on knowlage=busted knuckles, no hair and a grin when your done.

got one layin around here.....

maxwedge@webtv.net

Short tail of van?

short tail A-body...had it in my 76 duster....
didnt get along with the 340 i put in....had the case welded once...
worked ok....just not a performance geared tranny.....bearing retainer has some rust on it now........its piled up with the other orphan parts i have.

maxwedge@webtv.net