Are you saying that instead of dealing with the troublesome Toyo Kogyo in my '84 I can replace it with a transmission from a Mustang??THAT WOULD BE AWESOME !!
i'm running the 2.8 ......so the bolt pattern on the bell housing matches mustang T5??
What years/engine do I look for??
The conversion necissary to swap a T5 into your 1984 ranger would require parts that are now incredibly Rare and the conversion is more invasive than what would be necissary to swap in a 1988-up Mazda M5OD-R1 trans.
Three things break manual transmissions:
1)Torque
2)Lack of maintainance
3)Old age.
with a 2.3, 2.8, 2.9 3.0 there is no torque so failures are typically a COMBINATION of "Lack of Maintainance" and "Old Age"
People whining that a transmission failing when it has 175,000 miles on it AND they ran it out of oil... it well... it makes my bitch slapper itch.
4.0's actually have torque, which 4.0? Yes.
but most of those transmission failures are still old age and lack of maintainance.
And don't be blaming the three rubber plugs, the worst they do is "weep" because they are designed to allow the tranmission to "Vent"
Leaving OUT and it still takes 6-9 months to make the trans
blow it's oil supply overboard....
You chould be changing your engine oil atleast every 90 days
You should be checking ALL fluid levels (including the trans)
every time you change the oil.
If you do you should NEVER lose all the oil in the trans.
If you are NOT checking your trans oil that often you have only
yourself to blame.
IF you have actually BROKEN your transmission, Like I have you need to be intelligent about what failure actually occours.
On my last trans I actually snapped off the output shaft!
But that was the result of another failure... but to understand the failure I experienced you have to understand how the shifting is actually accomplished
inside the 1354 mannual T-case... you move the T-case shifter lever and it moves a cam which presses on a spring... the spring actually presses the shift fork, there is another spring that pushes it out of 4x4 when you move the shifter back to 2Hi. in my 1354 that secong "kick out" spring broke.
So I was driving on PAVEMENT with lockers and weight in the truck and the driveline shock from the inevetible driveshaft windup actually fatigued the output shaft of the trans until it snapped off.
There was nothing particularly "sudden" about the shaft breaking as even after it snapped the truck was driveable, even though I was not completely aware
that the shaft had snapped because the broken piece was "Captive" in the T-case input... when the truck stopped moving (with a loud BANG!)
under it's own power was when the broken pieces of th1 trans output shaft
generated sufficient "Camming force" to break the T-case front bearing retainer...
When I started the teardown I thought the T-case had failed, I was half right.
Simply knowing something has failed is something any idiot can do
Knowing WHY something failed without making ASSumptions is considerably more difficult.
I find that people have a tendency to think because something has failed that they need something "better" when the something "Better" may actually be worse!
The comment that I'll make about the T5 is that many of the internal pieces
of that enormously overrated trans are actually made by the "powdered metal sintering" process, in essence they are CAST!
Here's a funny thing about the T5 trans, you'd think that because it is a "v8 transmission" that it would be almost indestructable behind a 4cylinder engine.
But the fact it isn't, they have MORE failures behind 4cylinder engines
because 4cylinder power delivery is a series of 110 degree "pulses" of power
in each 720degrees of rotation, so the transmission receives the power as a series of "hammer blows", a V8 engine with overlapping power pulses doesn't do this to a transmission, even at double the torque the smoother power delivery doesn't tend to break things as badly.
and as much as people whine about the M5OD-R1 using ATF for lubricant...
Care to guess what fluid is specified for the T5?
That's right, it's Mercon!
The T-5 is NOT a cure all for transmission woes.
But you'll likely never hear someone who has gone to the monumental effort to install one in a Ranger tell you they are JUNK, but they are.
Don't get me wrong, but they shift "nicer" than an M5OD-R1, but there
is a cheaper way to get a transmission that shifts "nice", spend the
money on a Hurst shifter for the Mazda trans, I believe a Mazda with a Hurst shifter actually shifts BETTER than a T-5 does... unless you add an aftermarket shifter to it too....
THE thing about the Mazda is that they are DESIGNED to fit a Ranger with factory parts, so nothing "custom" is required.
I believe in following the path of least resistance
AD
Welcome Visitor! Please take a few seconds and 
