Posted by Gordon Maney on Thursday, May 11, 2006 at 11:24PM :
In Reply to: TRANSMISSION HELP..5 SPEED.. posted by John Eickhof on Sunday, May 07, 2006 at 8:39PM :
If you have one of these transmissions on the ground, remember that the direct position, where you have locked the mainshaft to the input shaft will always be direct. That is the position where you have pulled the knob toward the rear of the truck. On the overdrive transmission, 4th and 5th are reversed in their position. To get to the overdrive fifth position, you are pushing the knob forward.
A common mistake made on those transmissions is that the person pulls it into the common location for fifth, decides, no, it is a direct, and walks away, thinking it is not what they want. You have to check the common fourth position for an overdrive.
Consider where fourth gear is in the garden variety, fifth direct transmission. Put it there. Turning the input shaft one turn under those circumstances will cause the output shaft to turn less than one turn in a fifth direct transmission. If you get more than one turn out of the output shaft in that typically fourth gear position, that means it is an overdrive trans.
Even some of the less experienced salvage operators will miss that, since they see so few of those transmissions in overdrive form. I have an overdrive 540 in my W300. It came out of a Studebaker truck and had the input shaft and output flange changed.