New commercial mount for 2004R transmission

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Hey guys, just playing devils advocate; if you look at my build thread, you'll see I did the cross-member chop, and now run a 42RH that I built myself. Stock they come with the 5 clutch direct, a spring that's wound the right way, swapped the input shaft to non-lock with a 9.5 PTC converter. OD is beefed up and sticks firm! People run the OD section, which all power runs through a clutch/steel set before it leaves, the 42RH shares this same section with the 46RH in 600 ft/lb diesels that pound all day at the strip. It isn't weak at all. It's a 904 that has an overdrive unit from a 727 stuck on the back of it. The A904 which historically, built with a little attention to detail can handle 500+ FT/TQ. Strokers are no problem.

So, in other words; I'm all for the hack. I'm just rambling.. From experience, I know what the deal is.
 
Wait a minute....Wait a minute!!! I thought the whole purpose of going with the 2004R was so that you wouldn't have to cut up the floor???? From what I've seen and read here on FABO, all the Mopar overdrive transmissions require cutting the floor. I personally went with the GM overdrive because I drive my car every day and didn't want to take the time required to pull the seats and carpet and cutting and fitting new metal into the floor. Then still having to deal with the underside in addition to all the floor work!!
Call me crazy but if the OP is offering a relatively inexpensive trans mount for the GM transmission don't complicate it by asking for the same mount to work with Mopar transmission as well. Besides....US Car tool doesn't have a car to built (and cut up) in order to design a mount for a Mopar transmission???

treblig
 
Just received an e-mail from Chris. Someone from this forum just ordered a mount, which is awesome. Can't wait to hear another person's thoughts once they receive their order!
 
Dart Vadr said:
Just received an e-mail from Chris. Someone from this forum just ordered a mount, which is awesome. Can't wait to hear another person's thoughts once they receive their order!
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Normally as more orders come in the cost should go down as the process becomes more efficient. Also if US Car Tool gets numerous orders at once the cost should go down because most of the cost is in setting up the tooling. Once the tooling is set-up it becomes easier and faster to produce the product.

Treblig
 
Thanks FABO folks for the positive and constructive commentary. Jeff is a very involved customer and researches much before any decision on his Dart.

We engineered the new cross-member to replace the factory center section of the torsion bar cross-member, provide clearance for the transmission (and the speedo sending unit!) and be stronger when installed.

I enjoy the debate about strength, angles, locations, material thickness. We did consider an awful lot of factors in the design including the prior work we have done installing 518 OD units in Mopar's and the Viper T56 we did in an E-Body.

A note about strength (please skip if this gets boring, thrills me to pieces but not everyone's cup-o-tea). Strength comes from the structure more than the material thickness. Think Cardboard tube. Rolled into a circle - pretty strong. Cut so it is just a rectangle of cardboard - pretty flimsy. Same engineering concept goes into the torsion cross-member, we engineered a structure to provide the strength needed to support the torsion bar rear mounts and be an integral component of the factory unibody monocoque construction.

If you study the strength of a structure, it is seen that the size of the structure adds more strength than the thickness of the material. The box is stronger than a 4"wide piece of 1/4 plate formed to follow the floor tunnel contour. The torsion cross-member replacement becomes a box when it is seam welded to the floor. Wicked strong ? - you betcha.

While Jeff is running the Coil-over from RMS, we built this to work on a standard, torsion bar in place, Mopar front end. When you consider how the rotational (twisting) force is transmitted to the cross-member, the U-shaped dog-leg angles do not have a negative impact at all. I get the bridge analogy, except bridges are designed for a force from above (vehicles traveling over them) or weather hitting them (wind etc.) and they are self supported in the middle - just hanging in space.

The replacement cross-member has a twisting force from the ends (torsion bar sockets) and the entire cross-member is supported along its entire length by virtue of being welded to the uni-body. It is a substantial component of the monocoque, has a force applied that is perpendicular to the bridge force analogy and is pretty darn strong when installed.

That was a major concern as we designed the piece and why it is a complete box (much harder to manufacture/fabricate) than just a thick steel plate. Sometimes I wish we could just use the plate method; we have a CNC press brake and could form up a 4"wide 1/4 (or 3/8") plate to follow the floor/tunnel contour in pretty short order. Just would not be strong enough though.

I can see from the responses that folks care about strength, and so do we. Please keep asking questions and challenging assumptions, that is how innovation starts.

Chris has been awfully busy in the shop but we do expect this product to ship in the coming week. We are always happy to help folks get this to fit a unique application and if slotted holes or multiple transmission mounts make that happen, we are happy to make the modifications for you.

Best Regards,
 
John,

Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to educate us about the engineering details of the new 2004R mount. Hopefully it answered some of the questions/concerns that had been posted. I'm anxious to hear the thoughts of others who decide to purchase this mount.

Jeff
 
Thanks for all the info John, that's a great post. :thumbup:

I already knew that UsCartool made good stuff, and I can tell just by looking at the designs of the parts you've already come out with that everything has some thought behind it. But the insight you provided definitely backs that up.

Now, how about those T56 mounts? Is the E-body one going to be available at some point? A-body version? I would think that you would be able to sell more than a few of them given a price point similar to the 2004r crossmember. Obviously the T56 mount requires more work on the part of the installer because of the tunnel modification needed, but perhaps a tunnel cover could be produced?

I know, an awful lot to ask for. But the more I drive my cars the more I think the T56 is the best long term solution for what I'm doing. Overkill no doubt, but with the "pro-touring" craze going strong, and the usefulness of having a 6 speed transmission, I would bet they'd be fairly popular.
 
Id love a KIT for my 66 Hemi Charger, I would drive it lots more.
 
OK - One of the items Chris I I talked about (in regard to transmissions and cross-members) is buying a T56 A-Body kit from SST (http://shiftsst.com/). They make it for the A-Body, but it requires tunnel mods. Chris wants the 6-speed for his 67 Dart project, so we figured we would buy the kit and make the tunnel / cross-member available as an install kit. Not sure how much tunnel modification, but we have two research efforts already underway for tunnel modifications, One is a space frame design and the other is a perimeter frame design. Both are just CAD drawings / engineering concepts at the moment.

So:

The 2004r cross-member is production ready by the end of this week.
The T-56 A Body version is at least a month away (after we receive the T-56 kit which we are ordering tomorrow)
The T-56 E Body or B-Body kit will require a customer that wants to make the install happen using the SST T-56 Magnum kit. We have done a Viper T-56 install into a Hemi Cuda , but it was all custom fabrication and we did not design a kit based on that install.
 
John426 said:
OK - One of the items Chris I I talked about (in regard to transmissions and cross-members) is buying a T56 A-Body kit from SST (http://shiftsst.com/). They make it for the A-Body, but it requires tunnel mods. Chris wants the 6-speed for his 67 Dart project, so we figured we would buy the kit and make the tunnel / cross-member available as an install kit. Not sure how much tunnel modification, but we have two research efforts already underway for tunnel modifications, One is a space frame design and the other is a perimeter frame design. Both are just CAD drawings / engineering concepts at the moment.

So:

The 2004r cross-member is production ready by the end of this week.
The T-56 A Body version is at least a month away (after we receive the T-56 kit which we are ordering tomorrow)
The T-56 E Body or B-Body kit will require a customer that wants to make the install happen using the SST T-56 Magnum kit. We have done a Viper T-56 install into a Hemi Cuda , but it was all custom fabrication and we did not design a kit based on that install.
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A month? Heck if it can be ready for Christmas I'd be buying one. That would be awesome.

Eventually I'd love to put one in my Challenger as well, but I don't see that happening really soon. I'm sure there's someone else out there on a shorter timeline than me for that one.
 
Dart Vadr said:
Just received an e-mail from Chris. Someone from this forum just ordered a mount, which is awesome. Can't wait to hear another person's thoughts once they receive their order!
Click to expand...

That would probably be me. I talked to Chris and committed to buying one. I just ordered my new tranny from Lonnie at Extreme Automatics this morning.
 
Just some updates;

1. The new crossmember and transmission mount, to install the 2004r in the Mopar A-Body, is now in production, link to the details: http://store.uscartool.com/67-75-A-Body-GM2004R-Cross-Member-Kit_p_107.html

Thanks for everyone who commented, suggested and in general supported this upgrade.

2. The new T56 is on order. We went with the .5 overdrive version, so Chris expects to run a 4.56 rear (yep, that is steep!) and cruise on the highway with 28" tall tires about 1750 rpm at 70mph. That is pretty street-able. Also should be a crazy autocross car and that is what he is building his Dart to be (This is Chris's Dart, not Jeff's dart which has the GM automatic. - subject of this thread). Should see the replacement floor tunnel and perimeter frame in about a month after we receive the T56.


Pictures of the crossmember and mount
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Again. You don't have to replace the crossmember section to install a 200r4, just flushing cash down the shi**er. But I know how GearLust can be.

LOOK at Trogdoor's thread, a simple notch in the stocker and he was good to go!

http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/showthread.php?t=252436&page=10

Pay close attention to post #226 and #230

All this work needs to be put into development for installing a 42RH/46RH. I challenge these folks to make a bolt in bracket for that without cutting the floor pan. That'll be the day!
 
Appreciate the link. I had initially investigated Treblig's (Trogdoor's?) approach, but was quite happy with the final product as engineered by US Car Tool. As John has previously noted, this mount is crazy strong when compared to the stock piece. You really have to see it in person to appreciate how truly beefy it is.

Frankly, I would be concerned that the stock piece would be substantially weakened by your average joe (which Treblig is obviously NOT - not demeaning his work at all) hacking away at their stock crossmember, especially with the torsion bars still in use. So, this piece is a viable option for folks without substantial fab skills.

With the above being said, I'm not going to engage in a flame war over whether or not I'm "flushing cash down the shi**er". Although, your comment did remind me that I haven't seen National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation in a while - "Shi**er's full!". Good stuff.
 
So that everyone understands what I did to my car.....The upper A body cross member is basically a formed piece of channel (U-shaped piece of metal). I removed a small section of the channel BUT,... I enclosed the open side of the channel (between the body and the cross member). The pics I posted show this very clearly. So even if I weakened the cross member channel by removing a small section of the channel I restrengthened it by boxing in the open side of the channel. So in essence, it's still a piece of channel but the open side is on the bottom side instead of the top side. Since I "put back" more metal (and heavier metal) than I removed it should at least as strong as it was before the transmission swap.
No offense taken,
treblig
 

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Cool man, didn't mean to be a dick anyway. Hope the whole project comes out ahead of schedule and under budget.
 
@Treblig - I thought that you had beefed up your crossmember in some way, but I couldn't remember what you had done. The point I was trying to make was that many folks (like me) without fab skills would likely just make some cuts to the crossmember and call it a day, which would weaken a critical structural member.
 
Does anyone have a measurement from the center of the output shaft of the transmission to the bottom of the transmission tunnel? I'm just wondering if I have too much, too little angle on the dangle in regards to the transmission slope front to back.
 
rednesss said:
Does anyone have a measurement from the center of the output shaft of the transmission to the bottom of the transmission tunnel? I'm just wondering if I have too much, too little angle on the dangle in regards to the transmission slope front to back.
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Your question makes no sense?? BUT....you should shoot for 3 degrees of engine/trans angle (FROM HORIZONTAL). If you body (frame) is horizontal then your engine/trans should be 3 or 4 degrees down in the rear. Once you have the engine/trans angle correct you set your rear end appropriately!!

treblig
 
I'll try to explain it a different way then, if you were to have the car up in the air on a lift, and had the driveline off, and you had a tape measure in your right hand, and you put the end of the tape measure against the tallest portion of the transmission tunnel, relative to your head, perpendicular to the output shaft of the transmission, would the numbers you would be looking at be 6 1/2 inches, or 8 1/2 inches, or fill in the blank where the tape measure meets the center of the output shaft? Does that make sense????
 
I'm totally sorry but you have to have a reference point. When you say, "6 1/2" or 8 1/2"" makes no sense. I'm not trying to be an @ss, I'm honestly trying to help. Your transmission tail shaft or output shaft should be at an angle that makes your engine and transmission 3 to 4 degrees down hill. If your car is on a lift the frame should be horizontal (you can check and make sure). When the factory installed the engine they made sure that the engine/trans were at 3-4 degrees down at the rear so that engine oil flows down and to the rear of the engine. To be honest the trans tunnel has nothing to do with it. The only thing that matters is "Engine/Trans angle".
Please don't beat me up, I've installed many engines and transmissions in many cars/hot rods etc.

I recently installed a 2004R GM transmission in my '69 Barracuda. All I cared about was the engine/trans angle (when the frame is level). NOT the distance from the tunnel to ANYTHING!! You can completely remove the tunnel and you would still have to get the engine at 3-4 degrees down hill (front to back).

Even 2 degrees down at the trans output shaft would work....

Hope this helps........
treblig
 
Treblig is right, the angle is what's important.

Yes, that angle will roughly translate into the distance from the top of the tunnel to the output shaft of the transmission, but here's the problem with that- too many variables go into that distance. The distance from the output shaft to the top of the trans tunnel will change from car to car, because the trans tunnels weren't a critical part. Meaning the tolerances could easily be a 1/4" to 1/2" different from car to car. The torsion bar crossmember has to be pretty close, but the floor isn't always tight to that crossmember, they were only tacked down in a few spots. Not only that, but the height of the engine isn't exactly the same on all of these cars. Depends on how worn out your engine mounts are, whether they're the biscuit or spool type mounts, whether you're running rubber or poly mounts, etc. So, if all you do is match the measurement from another car there's no guarantee that the transmission angle will be the same/right, even if the distance to the tunnel is.

The angle is the measurement that has to be right. The distance shouldn't vary a whole lot, but it isn't the critical measurement, the angle is.
 
Bump....


I'm really liking this design as it ties the T-bars & floor back together when the upper crossmember must go. Even though it's marketed as a 200R4 part, it especially looks like it could be a robust alternative when installing a Tremec.(T5,TKO)

Anyone have any other experiences using this or with an aftermarket manual?
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