We Have Gears to Row!!

Dec. 30, 2020 - The transmission is in!!! It took a bit of fight to get the AOD transmission out of the Mustang, but she came out. I had to pull the top of the intake to get to a couple of the bolts, so I thought I may as well pull the lower intake off and clean it up while I was there, and since I had to pull the headers anyway because of the broken stud, I thought I may as well throw on my aluminum Ford Racing gt-40X heads I had laying around. A couple of the header bolts broke in the factory iron heads to my decision was pretty easy. So now we are down to the short block and the AOD trans is off and leaking all over the floor (no matter how empty an automatic trans is, they will always leak everywhere). After checking the rear main seal (good), I bolted up the lightweight billet flywheel, a new purple Zoom clutch (it looks red in the photos), and then the 5-speed trans. I dropped the AOD with a floor jack and then slid it off and out from under the car, but the 5-speed was so light I just bench pressed it up into place and bolted her up, slid the new trans cross member into place and the bolts through that, Before all that lifting, I riveted the trans hump panel for the 5-speed into place and fought with ripping the single pedal for the auto trans out and wrestling the new to me (used) clutch/brake pedal combo into place. You'll notice the steering column and dash is out also for some modifications to come later.