Going from a Ford T5 transmission to a Ford C4 tranny wasn't that bad.

With basic handtools, the transmission swap took me and a friend around a day.

     Have you ever changed your manual transmission out for an automatic?  Most people will probably never need to do this, but in my case it was clearly the best option.  I recently purchased a 1991 Ford Mustang coupe with a 5.0 liter motor and a T5 transmission.  I bought the car even though the tranmission had a problem with 2nd gear, the sychronizer for that gear was bad.  Why would I buy a car that had a tranmission with a bad 2nd gear sychronizer?  Price!  I thought I had stumbled onto a good deal and I knew from years before that swaping a T5 over to an automatic was not really a big deal.

     Many years ago I helped a couple of friends swap their transmissions on their Mustangs.  One had a manual five speed T5 transmission and the other had an AOD tranny.  Both of my friends wanted the other kind of tranny in their stangs.  So, the tranmission swap began.  Even then it only took us two to three days to finish both cars up.

     Anyhow, back to my recent tranny swap and my newest stang.  We began by getting the stang as high up in the air as we could with our six ton jack stands.  This allowed us plenty of room to wiggle and crawl around on the concrete while changing the transmission.  Of course, the very first thing you should do when working on your car is disconnect the battery.  Once that was done it was time to start loosening the bolts on the exhaust, crossmember, driveshaft, and transmission.  It won't be long and you'll be ready to pull that T5 transmission out of there, but you will probably want to have a jack nearby to help you with the weight of the transmission.  We borrowed a transmission jack from one of our buddies which ended up helping out quite a bit.  After we had removed all the exhaust, driveshaft, and transmission crossmember we pulled the transmission jack in and lifted it up to fit against the T5 transmission.

     Next, we each began pulling back on the T5 and wiggling it.  It easily comes out, and then you can let the transmission jack down slowly as you go back with the tranny.  We then got the tranny out of the way and into a corner in the garage.  Back under the car there is still plenty to do at this point.  The flywheel was next on the list as it needed to be removed and replaced with a SFI approved flexplate.  Before we put on the new flexplate, we decided to go ahead and get the pilot bearing out of there.  This can be a lot of fun for someone who has not removed a pilot bearing before.  We ended up having to literally chisel out the pilot bearing so that the automatic transmission and stall converter would fit properly.

     Once the pilot bearing is out of there and your flexplate is installed, it's just a matter of stabbing the new automatic transmission.  We had to work at it a bit but it finally fell into place.  The hardest part for us was lining up the converter bolts so that they came through the flexplate as there was nearly no visibility behind the flexplate due to clearance issues.  Next, we just bolted down the tranny and made sure all bolts were secure.  I ended up having to have another buddy take my crossmember and make some adjustments on it to make it work. 

     After getting the crossmember back, it was just a matter of bolting it up and putting all the other components back on such as the exhaust, driveshaft, etc...  When it was all said and done, the car ran great and I was very happy with the results.