SBC to 3053A Progress

[Barrman]

This swap has been more than 2 years in the making, but it is finally coming together pretty fast. Many people have done the Chevy V8 to M35 5 speed swap in the past. So, I won't go into all the different part numbers. Just find a C60-C80 from the 1970's or a school bus from the same time frame and pull all the bellhousing, clutch, flywheel, adaptor plate and starter off.

The little things are a killer on this deal though. Such as the pilot bearing. You need a Timken #205FF bearing. The pilot bearing actaully sits in the flywheel on this set up. The bearing will fit the flywheel, but has a 1" ID. The 3053A input shaft has a 3/4" OD. Soooo, a 3/4-1" shim is needed. Pistolnut found a shim that was perfect at TSC. Its real purpose in life is to shim up trailer balls on hitches.

I will let the pictures show the other little things. Such as the adaptor plate. Here it is sitting on the engine:

You must install it before you install the flywheel. It isn't fun pulling that big flywheel off after you already got it on and torqued down. I learned this first hand.

Then, once the adaptor plate is on, bolted down, torqued with "Thread locker Red", the flywheel installed the same way like this:


You will find that all the bolts holding the adaptor plate not covered up by the flywheel have to be removed before the bellhousing can bolt on. That is not a fun thing to learn when you finally got the bellhousing/transmission all the way up to the heads of those bolts. So, if a bolt isn't covered up by the flywheel, remove it or leave it out. The bell by the way bolts to the transmission before it is installed on the engine.

Then there is the clutch. It is huge. Therefore, none of the normal vehicle sized clutch alignment tools that slip into the pilot bearing and center the clutch disc while the pressure plate is bolted on will fit. Thankfully, I had a Snap-On part number A145 at home and brought it in to do the job. Here is the clutch installed:


One cool thing about these bellhousings is the service port. It sure is a lot easier to line up the splines when you can stick your hand in there and twist the parts involved. Easier to see too. Since, we had to do this twice I really appreciate it. Here is the unit kind of bolted together since class ended this morning before we got all the bolts in and torqued:


Another little thing that I don't have a picture of is the Spicer # 2-2-579 that Gimpy discovered. This allows a 1310 u-joint to bolt directly to the output flange on the back of a 3053A. Pistolnut ordered one from Gimpy's source last week and it was on my front porch last night. We will install that next week. Since the Spicer plates for the engine mounts are already done, that means we can set the engine in the truck, hook up the short shaft to the t-case, set our front to back spacing from that, level the engine, drill and tap the "plates" and then start fabbing a rear transmission mount. Progress!