Drivetrain Aod(e) Transmission-should I Do Myself?

[JordanB21]

To start off, my 95 mustang GT has suffered a few injuries. The loss of my 4th gear being one, so I bought a transmission locally! Supposedly it has 55,000 original miles on it, and it looks pretty clean, but all I need it to do is run.
The pathetic part is, this happened while spinning at 5300 rpms on a barely year old rebuild (just barely out of warranty as well). A friend of mine was passing me on an open highway (spare me your morals) in a volvo s90 I believe, so I gun it, considering her car it was suppose to be an easy pass up followed by a casual ride home.
Then, *boom* slipping. I slide it back into netural, and back into drive, it kicks to third, all good, kicks to fourth, and gone, it spins freely as the rpms climb..

But anyways, my real question is, should this be a swap I should be doing by myself, or should I have a shop do it?
I feel like it wouldn't be impossible to raise the car high enough and wheel in the new transmission and torque converter. However, I've been wrong before.
Also, how much would you estimate a shop cost for something like this? (pulling the old, putting in the new)
for a transmission shop I'd imagine 3-5 hours of work.

An additional question I had, while the old transmission is out, if I was planning on 4.10s or 4.56s gears later on, should I change the speedo gear now?

 

[JordanB21]

and here's a few pictures to make this thread more interesting. everyone likes pictures.

 

[94GTCoupe]

T5 conversion.
I went through one expensive rebuild and a bad torque converter before I got tired of worrying about the aode.

As for your question, it can be done by one man, four jack stands and a jack.
just go slow and be careful.
that bisch is heavy!

I can't speculate on labor costs
it's been many many years since I've taken any car to a shop.

 

[94Blue302GT]

I would also recommend the T-5 or another manual transmission as it would be more fun to drive, cheaper to fix, and more fun to drive
But automatic transmissions are pretty heavy. If you have someone knowledgable to help you, then go for it.

 

[JordanB21]

If I didn't already have this aode and didn't get it for a steal of a price then believe me, I would be going t5.

If this transmission fails me, or rather, when it does, then I'll be going t5 and I defiantly will be doing that swap myself (gotta learn somewhere).

As for how I ended up deciding to handle this, I called a few shops and got some estimates which were in my ballpark, so I'm going to sadly take the shop route. AODes seem to be more trouble in putting in from the bit of research I did.

Now if you could both make your way over to my suspension thread and help me clear up that mess
I'm debating sourcing parts, but either way, I'm doing that one myself, there's no need for a shop.
http://www.stangnet.com/mustang-forums/threads/curb-accident-pushed-suspension-back.874999/

I'll let you guys know how the transmission swap goes and how much it all was said and done.

 

[Road_Runna]

Ahh yes the Aod-e, got rid of mine.
Changing out the trans shouldn't be too hard , 4 jack stands, transmission jack (or regular jack with few modifications), and maybe 2 25LBS weight lifting plates to place under the front jacks in case you can't clear the transmission.

I would only worry about putting everything back into the car, the torque converter needs about a quart of trans oil before it' mounted to the transmission. If I remember corectlly it has to be rotated into the transmission shaft while pushing at the same time, there should be about 3 thuds to be seated corecttlly.

There's a how to somewhere around these forums.