A833 4speed OD trans Swap Question

The stuff needed from Brewers for a conversion would cost $539.85 + the ride.

$249.95 for the gear set
$89.95 for the short O/D main shaft
$99.95 for the 3/4 O/D Syncronizer assembly

The idea behind swapping the gear set from his '75 O/D trans into his stock 1:1 trans would be to avoid having to do anything at all to the bellhousing.

If the spline count is the same on both of the tailshafts between the one in the car and the '75, all of the parts are the same dimensions where they need to be at the bearings.

If you take the parts from one trans and dump them into the other, technically, you wouldn't even need to remove the bellhousing or even worry about re-indexing the bell on to the block to center it, you wouldn't have to index the input shaft on to the clutch if you didn't touch the clutch pedal when removing the trans from the bell.

Basically, if the trans was just taken out and both put up on a work bench, it would go right back in with absolutely no machine work and a minimal amount of labor. You don't even need to swap countershafts. Just the cluster gears on them.

I think it would be more work to try and use the entire O/D trans than it's parts, because you have to pull the bell, machine it, re-index/ align the dowel pins, measure runout, index the clutch on input shaft, etc.

The only other way you could use the O/D trans without machining the bell serves up another problem; With the 4.8" front bearing retainer, you could remove it from that trans as mentioned above and just use it in place of the 5.1" retainer, but this car having the 4.3" bearing retainer has a different bolt pattern. You can't machine the 5.1" bearing retainer down to a 4.3", because it would interfere with the large pattern bolt circle that the 5.1" and 4.8" have. It's too small to get the O/D bolt pattern to work in the 4.3" I.D. bell, which is why they have to be machined.

Technically, you may end up doing both, trying to get a 4.3" bell to go into a 5.1" trans. I don't know that you could cut a 4.3" bell out to a 5.1" without messing with it's integrity at that spot on the bell. I think people doing that are using a 4.8" bearing retainer or machining the 5.1" retainer down to that size, then cutting the 4.3" bell to a 4.8" meet in the middle.

That's why I'd vote swapping gears if the output splines give you a green light. It would save time and money, plus you would have new seals and even if you didn't throw a rebuild kit at it, you would at least know the condition of the parts going in without a doubt.