Posted by David Sherman on Monday, November 28, 2005 at 0:17AM :
In Reply to: Dave -5-Spd Trans with LH PTO posted by Lebowski on Sunday, November 27, 2005 at 10:00PM :
I think most of the surplus dealers (Memphis, Antelope Valley, Dodge City, etc) sell good takeouts for $250 or so. I've bought 2 untested 3053 takeouts from Brad Milne in Yelm, WA for $125 apiece. Put one in a truck of mine and it worked fine. His boss has the scrap contract for Ft Lewis and gets all the residue trucks. The only problem was they sat in the rain in his yard and some water got down around the shift collar, but that's liable to be a problem with most takeouts since most of the M35s, especially residue trucks, have long-gone rag tops and the trannies got rained on even in the truck. A little rust on the gears isn't really a big problem. I just picked up 2 more 3053s via gov't liquidation for $170 for both. They look okay outside and the shafts turn, but they were listed as condition code H7. At this point I have 3 takeouts of unknown quality, one known bad one that Brad gave me for parts, and the one that blew out on me, so it's just a matter of taking the covers off them all, looking to see how they are inside, and swapping parts if needed to make as many good ones as possible. Bearings and seals are standard, and gaskets are easy to get or you can do like the army does these days and just use RTV. And yes, the PTO goes on the left. There's even a double-ended PTO available if you want to get tricky and add a hydraulic pump, PTO-driven welder, or rear winch.
My suggestion would be to find out who's getting the residue trucks from your nearest major army base, and try to buy a tranny from him. If you want a known good one, pick up a copy of MV magazine and look for the regular surplus dealers near you. You shouldn't have to pay more than $250 for a good take-out. If I just needed one for a truck I was building, I would probably pay a little extra and go to a surplus dealer so I could look the transmissions over carefully (pull the cover and look for rust, chipped teeth, bearing fragments, and burned synchros) and perhaps even get some sort of warranty.
You might also try Gov't Liquidation, but be careful if you buy from them. They just sold a bunch of what were billed as 5-ton transfer cases in their shipping containers at Ft Lewis. They were H7 condition, which of course means needs major repair, but when I looked in the containers, all that was inside was a bare casting and a random heap of gears and bearings all swimming (or drowning) in a foot of rusty water. Of course the pictures on the GL website just showed the outsides of the shipping containers. If anybody bought them, I hope he didn't pay more than $50/ton for them, because they were nothing but scrap.
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