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350 project


Guest Beefcake

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Guest Beefcake

I have a 77 280z with a 350 c.i. engine, it came out of a 1970 caprice. I have a auto. trans. in it right now but i want a manual trans. to put in it. Does anyone know what kind of a trans i need to put in? I bought the car with the engine already in it, but the guy said it used to be a manual he changed it to an auto if that makes a difference. flamedevil.gif

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Guest Anonymous

Welcome Brian.It will either take a lot of work or money to switch back to a manual transmission. Do a search since there was a post on a T56 tranny package in our Buy Sell Trade just recently, which will give you an idea of the costs and parts needed for a "top of the line" manual.I do not like automatics but believe that an overdrive auto tranny in a V8 Datsun is a logical solution since the engine revs very quickly and may take all the concentration a fellow can muster to keep it on the road without a lot of hand and foot movements.

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Guest Locutus

I am selling the transmission, the flywheel you would need for your application, and the clutch and pressure plate. All for 2500(negotiable). With everything I have you would still need to aquire a clutch master and slave cylinder. That will cost you another hundred or 2 depending on which ones you chose. Most Master Cylinders go for around 100 bucks with the slave usually costing about 60 bucks aftermarket. Consider it, ask questions and talk to Mike Kelly, he has done this swap he can apprise you of his experience and also check out the tech articles he did a great article on the T56 swap

 

Mike Vondran

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Guest Anonymous

The transmission and flywheel alone for $2500? Ive seen T56's from camero's with full plumbing on ebay for $1200.

 

sounds little pricey to me...

 

smile.gif

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Guest Locutus

Yes you can get lucky and find a less expensive transmission, but keep in mind the flywheel from the camaro will not work. That is an additional 275. The clutch and pressure plate is is a centerforce dual friction unit it is another 575 just by itself. So even if you find a deal on a transmission you are still right back at 2000 bucks. Truth is most trannys complete are closer to 1500-2000 by themselves then add in everything else. Ask anyone that has done this swap and they will tell you it is not cheap.

 

Mike

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Guest Anonymous

He's right, its not the most cost effective conversion. Mine was about 1700 and that was with the bellhousing, and all the camaro gear (it was a changeover for guys wanting to go from automatic camaro's to stick), T56 slave, camaro master (which looking at it I think could actually be kludged to work if a guy really wanted to mess with it, although it looks nothing like your normal firewall master cylinder.) and aluminum driveshaft from a F-body. Pricey yeah, but it was pretty complete and as he mentioned, the Centerforce flywheel I got at Racesearch.com for like 265.00 and I used a ram clutch for another 300 (slightly better than OEM) which is no where near as good as his dual friction which is more like 5-600.00 for the pressure plate, disk and bearing.

So yeah, his setup is pricey, but they all are, yes you can find T56's for cheaper, but I know of at least two that were DOA (dead on arrival)that were bought cheap. So check them out, people tend to slam shift them without a aftermarket shifter with positive gate stops and its damn hard on the internal shift linkage (like it can be cracked or broken.

My advise to those that say they can get them all day at 600 bucks on Ebay or whatever, buy everyone you can lay your hands on, you can easily double your money and more.

I love the T56, its got excellent gear ratio's for the most part, kinda tall overdrives, but I'll tell you the RPM drop from one gear to the other is pretty small so you don't get a huge RPM drop, just right, bam right into the powerband again.

Would I do it again? I donno, for what I paid, I could have easily gone with a Tremec 5 spd and I'm sure I would have been plenty happy with it and probably could have saved a bit of cash, but it was about what I wanted, not what I'd settle for and I always wanted the T56 out of the F body after test driving one. Just my opinion.

 

Regards,

 

Lone

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