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Larry that is an awesome post, so well put together and excellent explanations. I think if the conversion was hard for you, then you just made it MUCH easier for everyone else that will follow in your footsteps. I just copied your post into a doc. I hope you don't mind, to share with the other members of the Austin Mopar club. I think a lot of them will be very interested in this conversion now that you've laid it all out for them.

I think your right about fabbing your own crossmember, I was kinda leery about cutting up my original anyway.

Thanks so much for sharing all your hard work! I'm sure I'll have many more questions to come with my own overdrive conversion.

Chris


Thanks Chris,
I'm glad you really liked it, I hope it helps you or someone else along the way.
A couple of things to consider that I didn't say before about doing this conversion. This is in a truck application, in a car your going to have a whole nother set of floor pan issues. Also I am running a steel crank 440 engine. On steel crank engines they are internally balanced, no added weight on torque converter. If you are running a cast crank 440 engine you will need a balanced flex plate or some kind of a balanced torque converter. Maybe one from a 360 would work not sure on that someone better on transmission could answer that. Or maybe knock the weight off your 440 T.C. and tack weld it to the Lockup T.C. in the postion it was on the 440 T.C. On the cross memeber deal, I could have made the original work without cutting it by drilling the holes I did and didn't use in the early part of this post and then fabbing some kind of mount from the trans to it. But you have to space the orignial cross memeber about 3/4-1" away from frame rail at top with long bolts and washers and I just didn't like the way it was working out. I like mine better. It fits well and is solid as a rock.
Larry

77 Dodge Adventurer SE 440 2wd SWB
78 Dodge Adventurer SE 440 2wd Utiline
90 Dodge D150 SWB 2wd 318fi 4speed
60 Desoto Adventurer 2dr
67 Dodge Dart Gt Conv. 273 4bbl
04 PT Cruiser GT Turbo
14 Ram R/T
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