Thread: tranni conversion question

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I want to put a TH350 trans in my 69 chevy. It has a manuel right now. I converted from an i-6 to a 350 engine and need a longer transmission. also don't want to deal with getting the clutch linkage, driveshaft mod, and all that to work.

1. - Do they make a bracket that I can get to make the shifter on the floor (someone cut out a hole in the floor for manuel. guess they didnt like the column shift). so the only way the automatic would work would be to get a shifter to run through the floor

2. Does the TH350 have to have cooling lines hooked up to it? if so is that a big deal to do?

do not know about question 1 but on question 2 the th350 does have cooling lines. they are pretty easy to do. you can get a kit from almost any auto parts store. just put in the fittings in the passenger side usually of the tranny and run your lines to the fittings on you radiator.

There's lots of floor shifters for auto's. Take a look at Lokar (while you're looking for your throttle cable ) for one example.http://www.lokar.com/product-pgs/shi...s-shifter.html

For cooling, you will have to have a radiator with an internal transmission cooler, then like Barb says it is simply a matter of hooking up the lines from the transmission to your radiator connections.

The factory installed a transmission fluid cooler in the bottom of the radiator, probably because the bean counters told the engineers to do it that way. You don't necessarily have to have a cooler in the bottom of the radiator to operate an automatic transmission. You can mount a dedicated cooler in front of the radiator and run the lines into and out of the cooler.

The nice thing about the cooler in the bottom of the radiator though, is that the transmission fluid is kept at a fairly constant temperature commensurate with the temperature of the radiator cooling water. The advantage there is that the fluid does not get too cool. The fluid has to be up to temp (150-180 degrees F) in order to work correctly and a dedicated cooler in front of the radiator will not have the ability of moderating the fluid temp like a cooling circuit inside the radiator.

this would be better if we called it a heat exchanger-----unless your pulling a heavy load(slippage) the engine thermometer controls the trans temp

I'd trade my 700R for your manual anyday.

Speedway has 10 different bolt on floor mount shifters for your TH350. They also have universal trans coolers and install kits if your radiator doesn't have a bottom tank.
JJF

Unfourtuatly you are making a bigger project out of this than it really is.
These pickups came with V-8's and auto transmissions. You can get everything that you need from an after market vendor (such as LMC).
Also you should be able to find everything that you need in a wrecking yard somewhere.

There are also Chevy pickup forums that you can go to for advise on a particular item.
http://forums.classictrucks.com/69/6...cks/index.html

Here are a few aftermarket pickup places.

www.ecklerstrucks.com
www.lmctruck.com
www.classicparts.com/chevy



Edit:
After reading my post, I might have sounded a little harsh. I did not mean to. If you have never done this type of swap before, it might be a bit overwhelming. I have done so many of these kind of swaps it is kind of second nature and sometimes I don't think about someone that might have never done one before.

Originally Posted by Bug

Unfourtuatly you are making a bigger project out of this than it really is. These pickups came with V-8's and auto transmissions. You can get everything that you need from an after market vendor (such as LMC). Also you should be able to find everything that you need in a wrecking yard somewhere.

Here are a few aftermarket pickup places.

www.ecklerstrucks.com
www.lmctruck.com
www.classicparts.com/chevy

I agree with Bug. There's no reason you can't use your current manual tranny with stock parts. LMC is in my back yard, so visiting them would be easy for me, but I know that their guys do a great job on the phone.