I put a NP435/205 behind my 2002 Ranger 4.0 motor

[alwaystinkering]

Well, I managed to put a NP435 behind my 4.0 SOHC in my Ranger. It is NOT a project for the faint of heart. I decided to go down this path when my M5OD started making those death growls in 3rd and 5th gear, so I decided that I needed to go a different route as far as transmissions are concerned. As you are all aware of, the 4.0 has no aftermarket support in regards to trans swapping, so finding Rulebreaker's adapter was just the ticket I needed-I thought.

I ordered the plate from Rulebreaker and I have to admit the plate was as close to perfect as you can get. The holes lined up perfectly on my smallblock bellhousing and appeared to line up on my motor. I said appeared because on a 4.0 SOHC motor, the exhaust manifolds protrude past the back of the engine. Once I took the exhaust manifolds off the motor, I put the plate up and it fit perfectly. Once I placed the bellhousing on the plate, that was where the "oh crap" feeling started. I am not too sure what all interchanges between the SOHC and OHV motors, but I realized that the plate would not work with my stock exhaust manifolds. Looking online, I noticed the OHV exhaust manifolds off an Aerostar would work, but then they would be in the way of my spark plugs, so changing manifolds was out of the question. Plus, I live in the socialist state of California and I'm sure the smog nazis would have had a cow with me changing manifolds. Besides my EGR would have to have been rerouted. Not to mention, there would have been no realistic way to run the exhaust pipes without them getting in the way of the starter, front drive shaft, or some other stuff (there is not much room in these rangers to work with).

Going in and telling Mama that my idea ran into snags was not a very good feeling, but she took it extremely well. So, in order to facilitate the trans swap, I already had rebuilt the NP435 and set it up for the output speed sensor (OSS), so mentally I convinced myself that I was halfway there.

Regarding the OSS, I managed to find a gear out of another M5OD from a transmission shop. NOTE: Ford parts department was NO help at all in this endeavor. In fact, they couldn't even order the gear since they didn't know one existed. I took the gear and turned the inside on my lathe until it was the same diameter of the output shaft (forgot the measurments, but I have it written down somewhere). I then had an old input shaft for an old 208 transfer case, turned it down to the valley of the gear and cut it about 3/16" thick. Brazing it to the gear (brazing, not welding because brazing is non-ferrous and the OSS works of magnetic pickup), it slid on my output shaft perfectly. Then I added 2 spot welds as stops on the end of the shaft so the gear wouldn't slide all the way down the output shaft, I measured the distance the transfer case slides in, so basically the gear is sandwiched between the transfer case input and the spot welds on the other side. I then machined a hole in my tailshaft housing, made a plate with a hole big enough for the sensor, placed the tip of the sensor .02" away, and welded it all in place.

Getting back to the trans swap, I decided to build a bellhousing instead. I took a 12" pipe, 1/4" thick, cut it to 6 inches. Had a 1/4" plate with the hole in the center turned to the size of the bearing retainer. As reluctant as I was, I decided to cut up the adapter I got off Rulebreaker. I traced my M5OD on the adapter plate and basically cut off all the small block stuff, retaining all the 4.0l template. Placed the ring on there and welded it down. Took some 1/8" x 2" stock and built me a starter nose cone and then put on my old flywheel and dial indicator and centered the back plate. I got the plate centered to .004 of between the 12 and 6 o'clock position and .006 on the 3 to 9 position. Had my 12 year old son turn the engine over by hand to do this. I was lazy and left the spark plugs in, so he gained a few muscles helping me on this project.

Once the bellhousing was built, I had to decide where I was going to put my clutch arm. Since there wasn't much room, it was easiest for me to place the arm on the passenger side at the 4 o'clock position. Makes for a plumbing nightmare, but I have the hose temporarily run for right now. The slave cylinder is NAPA part # 73118, which is off a Chevy stepvan. I snagged a couple hoses from the junkyard and just spliced them together with compression fittings and it works perfectly. Best of all, I have an external slave cylinder!

The crossmember is butchered right now, but I have to build another one, so it's just temporary. Origionally, I was going to go with a 208 transfer case but ran into some severe clearance issues. It hit the frame and I didn't feel comfortable hacking up my frame. I cut some ears off the transfer case, but it started leaking on me, so I had that "oh crap" feeling again. Then I remembered I had an old 205 sitting in the barn. Grabbed that and it's the same driveshaft orientation as the BW1345, meaning that the front driveshaft is going to be in the same parallel as origional. With the 208, I was worried because of the size, the front driveshaft would be at an angle and I wasn't really that comfortable with that idea. So, 205 was the perfect thing. The only other issue I ran into was going with the 208, I could use my stock driveshaft. With the 205, I had to build me a longer driveshaft-about 6 inches longer.

Things I ran into in the cab. Well, the shifter location is right under the dash. I had to pull out the airbag computer, cut a hole, remove my heater baffle and that little pocket at the bottom of the dash. The shifter would not go in the trans, so I cut it off leaving a 3" stub and drilled a couple holes. Modified my shifter and right now it's held on with a couple bolts. This too, is strictly temporary. I intend on fabbing up a better shifter, but was in a rush to get it going tonight.

My thoughts on this. Well, it was a lot more involved that I anticipated. Right now, until I build a better shifter, 1st gear hits the dash and the shifter is extremely sloppy. The plastic clutch hoses are strictly temporary and will be changed to a better routed hose/metal tube system in a day or two. The stock exhaust is in place and no exhaust modifications were needed. Gotta fix that hole in the floor. Need to mount the airbag computer somewhere. Ford had their head up their butts when they designed the clutch master cylinder and the top bolt on the starter (how the hell do you get to it?). Ford dealerships suck and are the most unhelpful people on the face of the earth. Thank God for NAPA. If it wasn't for NAPA and their employees, a lot of hunting for parts and making this work would have taken a lot longer (no, I don't work for NAPA).

My driving impression with the new trans is very positive. I never liked the M5OD and felt that the gear spread was all wrong with the SOHC motor. With this trans, the truck feels like it was made for it. The gear spread seems perfect with this motor. Best of all, I have a decent reverse now. Of course this trans is quite a bit louder, but after being in Afghanistan for a year, I hardly notice it-haha. Oh, and my speedometer works with the OSS, so that's a success! Loosing 5th gear isn't a concern with me. For the past month I was driving in 4th since 5th made too much noise. My gas mileage didn't go down much at all. In fact it appeared to remain the same. Not sure if I was just driving slower, but I didn't notice a decrease unless I went over 70. Besides, I think the engine was working a bit harder in 5th, so it negated the perceived fuel savings.

I have some pictures of the various stages in the build and will post them tomorrow. My camera is in the barn and I don't feel like going out there right now (scared of the dark and that whole thing). Well, any questions, just ask.

 

[alwaystinkering]

Trying to figure out how to attach pictures. My pics are too big, so I have to resize them. As soon as I figure out how, I'll post them.

 

[alwaystinkering]

Ok, here are the first pictures. Titles should be self explanatory, but essentially they are regarding the OSS and the installation on the tailshaft and the modification I've made to intall the sensor on the tailshaft housing

 

[alwaystinkering]

In the above post, let me explain a bit about what I had to do. The gear is self explanatory, but basically I had to bore out the inside to enable it to slide on the shaft. To keep it from just spinning I took a piece of an input shaft out of a 208 and turned it to the size of the valley on the gear. Then I brazed it together and slid it on the shaft. To keep it sliding all the way off the shaft, I just put a couple tack weld bumps on the end of the splines on the shaft. When sandwiched between the transfer case and the bumps, the gear is locked in place and won't move.

On the tail housing, I milled out a slot so I could weld in a piece of steel. Since the sensor is fairly thick and has an o ring on it, I needed some fairly thick steel. I figured because I'm going retro with the old tranny and everything, I might as well use old steel, so that hunk of metal actually came off an old IH plow and is 5/8th inch thick. Not sure why I decided to weld it in place instead of brazing, but my welder was all set up and ready to go, so I just welded it. Since it's not load bearing, I wasn't concerned about welding it. Making the hole in the tailshaft housing so big was because I wasn't exactly sure of the placement and needed to have wiggle room to put the sensor in the correct spot. For you non-metal working guys, if you notice, I didn't make a rectangular hole with square edges, but left them rounded. I did this because sharp angles are more prone to cracking. This is where a mill came in handy. I could have just drilled holes and cut it out, but the mill worked for me.

One thing I forgot to mention was the dam at the bottom of the tailshaft housing. I had to grind it down a bit so the gear would slide in all the way. I only took off maybe 3/16th of an inch, but it was a necessity and won't affect anything.

 

[alwaystinkering]

Here is a pic of the completed sensor in the tailhousing. I forgot to mention, but the airgap between the sensor and the top of the teeth should be .02 of an inch. There is a little variance so getting it a bit farther away shouldn't be an issue, but the spec is .02. Anyway, it works and my speedometer and cruise control work fine in my truck.

The next picture is of the plate I got from Rulebreaker. As you can see, if there wasn't any clearance issues, the plate would have worked. With the 4.0 SOHC motors, however, the exhaust manifolds were in the way and prevented the plate from even resting on the engine-especially on the driver's side. Once the manifolds were off the compactness of the Ranger becomes even more apparent. I highly doubt that a different manifold/exhaust routing would have worked on the 4x4 trucks with the front axle/driveshaft and I really didn't feel comfortable running the exhaust so close to the starter. I figured the stock exhaust routing was the best way to do things, so that thinking was what led me to build the bellhousing.

 

[Rulebreaker]

When I put the 435 in my Aerostar I had to change the passenger side exaust manifold and oil filter housing to an Explorer setup for the same reasons. I'd like to know if the flywheel bolts on the 02 are the same pitch as the older ones so buying them might be a good option. Next question would be is how much Ford wants for them. I'd like to see some more pic's also. RB

 

[alwaystinkering]

Going off memory from my friend's 2.9, I'm thinking the bolt threads are the same. The biggest difference is the heads of the bolts. On my Ranger, I had to use a E12 socket, basically the bolts are a male Torx head. The shoulders are very small. If I get a chance to hit the junkyard soon, I'll see if I can find out for sure.

Like I mentioned before regarding the exhaust manifolds, I don't think OHV manifolds will work on a SOHC motor. I found website that sells new manifolds and wondered if possibly manifolds off a Mustang would work, but didn't want to shell out the money on experimenting and they would have required replumbing my EGR, so I figured going stock was the way to go. Here's the link to all the exhaust manifolds: http://www.stevensparts.com/FORD EXHAUST MANIFOLD.htm

I'll post some more pictures up later tonight.

 

[alwaystinkering]

For some reason I thought I took pictures of the building of the bellhousing but either I didn't or I deleted them by accident. Well, at least I took pictures of the pertinent things like the starter nose cone housing and the clutch arm location. You can also see my ugly shifter. I'm going to redo it, but for right now it gets the truck in gear.

A note about the clutch on this truck. With the pressure plate in this particular model, you have to preload it. Basically, you have to compress it and push this arm over while compressed. It's designed to be self adjusting. Well, I did that procedure and had problems with my throwout bearing making noises. Come to find out, you have to have tension applied to the clutch fingers-that seems to be the way it's designed. Don't ask me much about it because it doesn't make sense to me, but a friend who works for a transmission shop told me that's the deal with these particular pressure plates.

My wife wanted the transmission painted blue, so being a good husband, I did what she wanted. The transfer case has oil all over it but I'm going to be rebuilding it. In fact, the kit just came in today, so I'm going to rebuild it soon. It was sitting for quite a while and the seals are out of it but luckily the bearings seem to be in good shape. Not to mention, I forgot to plug the hole where the speedometer cable went so it puked out a bunch of 90 weight.

As you can tell, the exhaust fits and is all stock. I do need to make a bracket on the crossmember, however since one bracket attached to the trans mount, which I had to relocate for the new transmission.

Speaking of the transmounts, I also had to lower my mounting bracket. On the NP435, the mount perch is farther distance from the output shaft center than it is on the M5OD, something like 1.5 inches or so. Initially I was going to reverse the crossmember, lengthen the holes, and mount it that way. If I did that, the output of the trans would have been higher than stock and I would have ran into driveline issues. That was something I thought of almost at the last minute-glad I caught it though.

 

[alwaystinkering]

For some reason the exhaust in the pictures look odd. It looks like it is not level, which it isn't. I didn't really pay much attention when I took it off, but I think it was like that to keep the cat away from the starter as much as possible. It is stock, though, and bolts on in the same exact location it came off as.

The slave cylinder seems close to the exhaust as well. I was going to put a heat shield around it, and still may, but it isn't getting too hot from the exhaust. I've put over 200 miles on it since I got it running Sunday night and haven't had any issues whatsoever, except for the clutch throwout bearing issue.

 

[nine-teen91stxranger]

is your truck a 4x4 or 2x4?

 

[alwaystinkering]

It's 4x4. I don't have a front driveshaft right now because the stock driveshaft has a dorky cv joint on the transfer case side. I need to build one but for right now I need to finish up the small details on this installation. I still need to figure out what I want to do for the transfer case linkage. I go out to Nevada and poke around there quite a bit, but I don't use my truck for rock crawling or anything like that. I've been thinking about twin sticking, but not sure if I want to go that route or not. Pretty much I just use 4 wheel drive when the conditions dictate. Nothing harsh or too daring, so I don't know if it's worth the trouble or not.

 

[Dirmaid]

Great work so far, takes a good engineer to... well, engineer

 

[Rulebreaker]

When I put the 435 in my 75 Bronco the shifter looked just like your Ranger. Only I just got the shifter cherry red and bent it to a 90. Did you modify the 435 bell or build yours from scratch? Could you post some pic's of the bell? Or cant you get a good look at it installed? RB

 

[alwaystinkering]

Thanks for the compliments, Dirmaid, but I'm not an engineer but just an ordinary guy with an overactive imagination.

As far as the factory bellhousing is concerned, Rulebreaker, there was no way I could use it. It was too wide and there would have been no room for the exhaust. That is why I had to design and build my own bellhousing. The only thing I used off the factory bell was the clutch arm and pivot, which I installed in my own bellhousing I built. I'll try to get better pictures of it, but it will have to wait until next week.

 

[alwaystinkering]

That origional shifter was strictly temporary. I had to cut the shifter ball fairly short to install and so I just welded a piece of 5/8" round about 6 inches long to the stock 435 shifter. It looked ugly, hit the dash in 1st and 3rd and mama didn't like it. I thought it would look cool with a chrome skull with red eyes, but mama nixed that idea as soon as it left my lips. So, I figured making the stock Ranger shifter work would be the best idea. That way I could keep the transmission swap hidden and no one would suspect. Besides, I figure it would be fun the first time I took it in for new tires and the mechanic put the truck in 1st and it would just crawl-hehe. I have to modify my cupholder, but it looks like it will fit in the stock location, so now all I have to do is figure out how to fill in 5th gear on my shift knob. I'm kinda anal about those things. If I don't have 5th, I don't want it on my shift knob, yet I want the knob to look stock and origional.