jikelly
Dirt-Old 20+Year Member
6Stang7 said:I am hearing a lot of mixed stuff here.
-Shaun
I had the same problem when I was trying to gather information on T5 before I did my tranny swap. Put a post on the 5.0 forum or really you could just do a search for info there. I'll bet that one of the guys there has a T5Z and can tell you how well it works.
For my own swap my plan was to find a T5 cheep from a junkyard and rebuild and upgrade it to handle my engine. Unfortunately I struck out at the junkyards. All but one of the T5s I saw at the yards were made for 4 cylinder engines and I looked all over West Texas. I did find a T5 from an 89 GT in El Paso but they wanted 700 dollars for it.
I actually found a T5 on ebay from a 92 GT and got it for 500 bucks but I decided it wasn't worth the trouble or money to rebuild the T5. So I sold it to another guy and bought a used Tremec 3550 for 800 dollars.
The problem with the T5s and even the T5Z is that they aren’t designed to handle more than about 300 lb of torque. I have a high performance 351w making close to 400lb of torque. So I felt that the Tremec was the only way to go.
For me the Tremec install wasn't too big a deal. WooHoo thank God for the big transmission tunnel on the 71-73 mustangs! For you the size of the Tremec might cause you problems. I have seen a few websites where in order to make a Tremec fit in the early stangs the tranny tunnel was cut out and a larger one was welded in its place.
Currently I am working on posting my Tranny Swap saga. I was going to ask the other members to look it over and tell me what they thought. I hope to finish it this afternoon and will be glad to share my experiences with you.
Good Luck