Rebuilding my M5OD-R1 99 Ford Ranger Transmission

[rebelrider.mike]

The transmission is back in the truck!

Only took about an hour with my son's help. I was able to torque 3 of the 6 bolts. I did my best with the other three. The cross member supporting the transmission is back in. I have some kind of torsion bar setup that I haven't seen anywhere on You Tube, nor does it appear in my shop manual. So I torqued everything back there to 70 ft-lbs. That's about as much as I can do under the truck with my bad shoulder. Hopefully it will be sufficient.

I guess I should try to blead the clutch next to make sure the slave cylinder won't leak. I've heard of brand new ones having bad seals. Still can't find my bleeder kit. I'll have to do the best I can without it for now.

 

[89longbed]

There is a very useful pdf of an M5R1 shop manual here on TRS. It's in the tech pages. I also bookmarked some good YouTube videos if you want me to find them. You need to look at several because people make mistakes with how things go back together.

A small rolling floor jack with an improvised wooden base works amazingly well, but strap the tranny to it once the input shaft comes out of the flywheel. At least it does on the 89-92 Rangers.

I suggest you have paper and pencil handy and draw yourself some detailed pictures of how the synchronizer hubs and collars are orientated as you slide them off the shafts. There are subtle differences between the front and back sides. The pdf has diagrams but this appears to be something that varied a bit from year to year, so document what yours are like (by synchro, ex. the 1-2 synchro) and which sides are toward the front. They will initially look symetrical but there are differences in how far the hub sticks out on the shaft and the shape of grooves or chamfers on the outside of the collars. You won't be able to keep them together as they were on the shaft, the hub will slide out of the collar, and there's 5 more pieces involved. Give each synchro it's own ziplock bag and label it. This will decrease the stress level a lot. Putting them back together is no sweat if you're not stressing over whether you have the parts aligned correctly.

I was able to get all my bearings off and on shafts without a press. I heated parts in the oven and used a section of large copper pipe, and a hammer, to seat the bearings. Timken has a pdf online that gives guidelines on how much you can heat bearings. None of the M5R1 internal bearings have plastic, so they're safe to a pretty high temp. Metal expansion is greatest in the 200-300 degree range (so my welding teacher said) so you really don't have to heat things up very high to get the bearings to slip right on.

 

[89longbed]

I could have sworn this thread was only one or two pages long just yesterday, but guess that's what happens when you don't look at the post dates.