A833 4speed OD trans Swap Question

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MOPAR4Me

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Hi, hoping someone can help me with this question.

I want to take a 1975 A833 OD trans and put it into my original 340 4sp A833 non OD car.

From what I have gathered, my car has a 4.354" bearing retainer and the OD trans has a much larger 5.125" retainer.

Want to make as few modifications as possible.

Can someone help me by telling me what bellhousing can be used?

Some say you can machine the larger retainer down, and use all the orginal parts from the non OD trany, but the machinest said that turning the 5.125" clear down to 4.354" would not work.

He suggest going with another later model bellhousing that would fit the OD trans and also my 340 engine.

Can anybody tell me what bellhousing would work so at the end of the day the only thing I would have to buy is another bellhousing.

Also being able to use all of my other original parts such as fork, etc..

Thank you for any help.
 
You could have your bellhousing machined to work with the larger bearing. A later model aluminum bell housing from a mid-late 70s car should have the larger hole though.
 
Thank you for confirming, also on the later bell housing option, hoping I can get a specific car model/s and know if I can still use all my other hardware like the fork etc..
 
I have machined the centers out in the past, but mopar made a bell housing that will fit right in our car.
Brewer's may have the correct bellhousing so everything is bolt in.

Have you drove a car with the od transmission, the gear splits are pretty crappy.
1st real high,
2nd ok but a big drop from 1st.
3rd like 4th in the tranny you have now.
4th drops the rpms aboout 25%
 
kevindahle thank you, just to confirm, was the swap you did on an Abody with a 340?

sireland67 thank you, I will call Brewer's tomorrow and ask what they have. Also, I have not driven a car with the OD tans, just interested in more kick at launch and being able to run on the fwy at lower RPM's.
 
The 340s I've had have the 4.810 bearing retainer. It uses the same bolt pattern as the 5.12, so you can change them out. I would check the bearing retainer on your 4 speed.

I've read that if you want to race with that trans that you should only use 1 - 3 because 4th will break the trans.
 
Thanks gremlin, so that would mean I still have to machine my bell housing out from 4.354 to 4.810 correct ?
 
What size is your Universal joint at the tailshaft? If your output shaft on the trans has 26 splines, everything will fit. If it's 30/ large U-joint, you'll have to run a conversion joint or do something with the yoke or driveshaft.

If you do have a 26 spline output shaft, you could skip machining anything and simply swap parts in the transmissions.

Check this article that Dick Landy wrote up, when these transmissions were new-

http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/showthread.php?t=202564&highlight=a833+overdrive

You have all of the parts you would need to swap the gears into a 23 spline input shaft/ 26 spline main shaft trans, if that is what you happen to be running in the car, currently.
 
Mine was a 360, in a 73 Duster but other than the machining I think it was with all factory parts, it was about 10 years ago.
 
Yeah, it doesn't take much to machine.

I'm just thinking that a lot of steps can be skipped completely and money saved, if the original running gear has the same number of spline teeth on the output shaft as the new O/D trans has.

If that's the case, the O/D gears and shafts will all go straight into the original transmission casing that the car has, with absolutely no modifications needed. The 307 and 308 bearings all have the same I.D., so the overdrive shafts and gears will work, as long as the output shaft splines are the same between the two transmissions, the driveshaft will fit correctly into the housing, with the O/D gears swapped over to the original case.

For that matter, if it's a numbers matching car, the transmission would still appear to be original.
 
Brewers will be able to sell you everything you need. Then if you want you can swap back in all the original parts.
 
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.
 
DaveBonds said:
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.
Click to expand...

I re-read his post and he already has a trans and would just need the bellhousing to swap the trans into his car. Why spend the xtra money and buy gearsets if he has a complete trans.
 
Right.

The only amount of measuring that may need to be done here with any luck is an output spline tooth count. It doesn't matter which number is had, 30 or 26, as long as both transmissions are the same count and both are an A body, the entire gear set will go from the O/D case with the 5.1" front bearing retainer, into the 1:1 case with the 4.3" retainer.

That way, your idea still works, by having a gear set around. The nice thing about doing a gear swap over an entire trans swap is that it is completely reversible without modifying the bellhousing.
 
Thanks DaveBonds, I love your idea of just doing the swap. Do not have the facts of the spline counts at this point, but now I am crossing my fingers that they do turn out to have the same count so I can just do your suggested swapping of internals.

Thanks for the input chryslerfat.

Thanks again kevindahle.

I will hold off on pursuing any additional parts purchasing, until I know what the spline counts are, so that I can proceed with the plan. I will keep you posted on what I determine, thanks to all again.
 
even if they don't, the only part you may have to swap, come to think of it, other than the gears and shafts will be the tailshaft housing from the '75, if one is a 30 spline and the other a 26.

Either way, you have everything you need to do this without touching the clutch or bellhousing at all.
 
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