In a message dated 6/5/2001 3:07:50 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
hunt@Kuentos.guam.net writes:
>
>
> Ardun Doug and list------ Doug 's interesting discussion on flatheads made
> me
> curious about transmissions for same. For instance, what will fit behind
> the
> 48 and earlier and the 49 and later. Also I have a 47 and a 49 Ford three
> speed column transmission. Are the gears interchangeable into a 39 for
> example. Are there any floor sticks, perhaps from a pickup truck, which
> might
> work behind a flathead with an adaptor? Curious in Guam. Terry Hunt, Guam
> Bomb, #743
>
Terry,
The 32-48 Ford passenger car and pickup tranny gears are mostly
interchangable as a complete unit. In other words, you can put 1948 gears in
a 1932 case. There are synchromesh/shifter fork issues that need to be dealt
with when making some of the swaps, plus there were various cluster gear,
low-reverse slider, and second gear combinations that one has to be careful
when interchanging.
The Lincoln Zephyr had some gears that could be used in the Ford
tranny, giving better overall ratios. I've never used Zephyr gears so I have
no first-hand knowledge of the specifics.
Since the 32-48 Ford/Merc blocks had their own integral bell-housing
it is a little bit more complicated to get those blocks "mated" to post-48
Ford transmissions. There were however adapters to mate the 32-48 block to
any number of Cad/LaSalle, Packard, etc. early transmissions.
The post-1948 Ford 3-speed tranny was never considered to be much
stronger than the 32-48 style. The passenger car 4-speeds of the late 50's
and early 60's were a different story.
The advantage of using a 49-53 Ford block is that the 49-53 passenger
car bell- housing bolted to the 60's Ford 4-speed transmissions, making a
much better combination than the early Ford 3-speeds. The 49-53 pickup bell
housing has the same tranny bolt pattern as the 32-48 passenger car and
pickup, getting you back to whatever was made to bolt up to a 32-48 Ford.
Ford used the "basic-Flatty" tranny in their pickups until the
Flathead was discarded for the 1954 style year. They were floor-shifters
through 1950, then went to the column-box. The difference was that Ford
pickups from 1942 to the present had open drivelines as opposed to the old
Flatty torque-tube. The open driveline tranny can be easily converted to
torque tube or visa-versa.
I also recall that there are adapters out there that will mate the
32-48 block to
the modern full-synchro 4-speeds. I just haven't any experience with them.
Anyway, to more directly answer your question, the 1953 and earlier
pickup tranny is no stronger than the 39 passenger car, just has better
synchros. They will bolt directly to any 32-48 block, and to any 49-53 Ford
block using the pickup bell-housing.
The 54 and later tranny is a whole different (OHV) engine and tranny.
The later tranny can be mated to the early block using the correct 49-53 bell
housing. As Far as I know, the 54 & later gears are completely different than
the pre-54.
Hopefully some of the more knowledgable guys will give some better
insight. While I've been fooling with the Flatty for many years, my basic
experience is using the 49-53 blocks to hopefully keep my heads and
crankshaft separated most of the time............................Good luck,
Ardun Doug King
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