I found one! I found one!

[freckles]

And WHAT, pray tell, might I have found?
Only the very thing I never HOPED to find: a VERY cheap FM145 tranny for my DD '93 Explorer. How cheap? Well, it was an absolute, no reserve auction of the remains of a quit-the-business, moved-on-to-other-stuff tranny shop, and I got it for $12.00 entire dollars. My max bid was $35, and no one else bid after the first guy at opened the ball for $2.00. HIS max must have been $10, because there were only the 2 of us bidding on this tranny. It may turn out to be a DuPont overhaul, but it is clean, and has the hallmarks of a shelf-worn rebuild that was built and never sold. But it's mine now, and I'll pick it up Thursday next week. I was fully expecting to walk away downtrodden upon finding the price of a junkyard tranny to be in excess of $500.00, and being forced into the A4LD as a final choice.

NOW THEN... I have a couple questions about the FM trannies...what're the differences between the 145 and 146? They are the same application, same parts lists, lots of interchange between them. The tag reads "E67A-FA", with an original build code 065208. It looks to me that the thing came out of the factory in '86.

Now 'all' I have to do is come up with the flywheel, shifter, starter, pedal set, T.O bearing and clutch bits to make the change-over happen. The DD has a sad, sad A4LD that needs a torque converter anyway and is slated to come out of service for repairs in a few days. Almost all the stuff I need off the parts Explorer is ready, but it's another A4LD. Great timing, no?

Maybe I'll be able to get the thing knocked out by August.

 

[pwrranger88]

im pretty sure with the fm your gonna have to shorten the front drive shaft and extend the rear

 

[stegomon]

the fm145 is 2 inches shorter than the 146. and the 146 is the same length as the a4ld and the m5od and sorry to say i hear that the fms go BOOOOM under the 4.0

 

[freckles]

Well, as to the BOOOOM!, I'm pretty easy on trannies, since if I broke it, I had to fix it: this since about the tender age of 10, when it pertained to bike repairs. You only pull a t-98 from an International, by pulling the engine first, and that kind of tempered my lead foot. But the admonition is not lost; I fully intend to allow this weak sister tranny every opportunity to live a long and happy life. The Explorer this is going into, is my daily back-and-forth to work, and around-town-errand driver. You know how lots of guys have trouble getting a clutch past 80K miles? My average for HAVING to replace a clutch is about 180K, and then only needing a disk and T.O. bearing.

But to my question for tonight: I notice from my LMC Explorer catalog, there seem to be 2 variations of the T.O. bearing. The 1st groups '91 & '92 together; the 2nd pairs '93 & '94. The DD is a '93, but the tranny is a late-80's build, and the pedals will be 92-94 Ranger.
I SUSPECT that either T.O. bearing arrangement will work, as long as there's no cross-pollination between the grouping, regardless of age of the pieces. Am I right?

I await the replies that are coming, prolly calling BS on my clutch mileage.

 

[Brownie Mobile]

My average for HAVING to replace a clutch is about 180K, and then only needing a disk and T.O. bearing.

BS, JK

 

[AllanD]

Well, as to the BOOOOM!, I'm pretty easy on trannies, since if I broke it, I had to fix it: this since about the tender age of 10, when it pertained to bike repairs. You only pull a t-98 from an International, by pulling the engine first, and that kind of tempered my lead foot. But the admonition is not lost; I fully intend to allow this weak sister tranny every opportunity to live a long and happy life. The Explorer this is going into, is my daily back-and-forth to work, and around-town-errand driver. You know how lots of guys have trouble getting a clutch past 80K miles? My average for HAVING to replace a clutch is about 180K, and then only needing a disk and T.O. bearing.

But to my question for tonight: I notice from my LMC Explorer catalog, there seem to be 2 variations of the T.O. bearing. The 1st groups '91 & '92 together; the 2nd pairs '93 & '94. The DD is a '93, but the tranny is a late-80's build, and the pedals will be 92-94 Ranger.
I SUSPECT that either T.O. bearing arrangement will work, as long as there's no cross-pollination between the grouping, regardless of age of the pieces. Am I right?

I await the replies that are coming, prolly calling BS on my clutch mileage.

Not only aren't you correct, you couldn't be more wrong.

Neither of the two T/O bearings you mention from LMC will work.

The FM145 uses an even earlier internal slave cylinder and the later type slave cylinders
simply cannot be made to fit.



I have personally had a 1200mile trans, not a rebuild NEW, that I had personally had sitting on the
shelf for a decate "go boom", by a gear literally splitting in half and that was behind a 2.9 engine.

and I really don't care how "nice" you shift it, the 4.0 makes more torque barely off idl ethan the 2.9
makes peak and in a heavier vehicle like an explorer bad stuff is gonna happen.

I'm not saying you cannot be gentle with it, I'm saying you cannot be gentle ENOUGH for it to matter
and one does of full throttle in 3rd gear will have immediate disasterous consequences.

And "Fix it" is simply a pipe dream. Why? because the that trans goes together like one of those Chinese wooden
puzzles, but to move any of those pieces requires a $2000 specialty tool set that's been discontinued for literally 25years.

And even if you HAVE those tools and know how to use them that doesn't cover that "hard parts"
(Parts other than seals and bearings) for that trans haven't been available since the mid 90's which I'll
remind you is 116-18years ago...

Not to mention that if you have a manual T-case NONE of the factory shifters will work properly with
a 13-54 T-case AND you have to fabricate BOTH driveshafts due to length issues....

There are other problems as well (clutch line incompatibility transmission crossmember location issues...)
that I don't really feel like dragging out.

Frankly I think you wasted whatever you spent on it.

Because the trans you REALLY need is a Mazda M5OD-R1

What you'll have to change and modify on the truck, NOT a matter of using a different combination of factory parts,
I'm talking pure fabrication, will easily cost more than simply buying the Mazda trans that will almost literally bolt
up to everything.

AD

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

For the 4x4 linkage you might bug Totalled, he did something similar with a C5 (which uses the same main linkage as a FM145) and a 1354.

http://broncoii.org/forum/index.php?topic=11822.0

 

[Shran]

Allan is 100% right on...total waste of time. You are better off selling that trans to someone who can bolt it right in, and use the proceeds to buy what you actually need.

 

[freckles]

Well, okay!
Thanks for the frank replies! I'll keep my eyes open and fix what I have, in that case. I appreciate the voice of experience! Maybe I can find somebody who needs it. It's not like I have a huge amount of money into this anyhow; by the time it's in my swap-fodder pile, maybe 40 bux, counting gas to go get it. That certainly won't break me.
I still have to pull the DD's tranny to change out the converter, so there's still a ton of work ahead to get this thing right...just not the complications of the auto-to-manual swap. Thanks again for the replies. I'm not as eddicated as I should be for this combination of pieces-parts, but I'm learning!

 

[Mini-Stroke...]

You wouldn't happen to still have the fm145 transmission, would you?

 

[PetesPonies]

I changed the clutch in my '89 Ranger at 173K and that wasn't because it was worn. The hydraulics gave up, so I changed it with it. My hipo Mustangs I own . . . . never have had to change a clutch from wearing them out. And that includes some drag racing and street racing, catching gears, etc. . . BB cars and SB cars. You can have fun and still know how to make a clutch last.