I'm interested to find out if there is a company that makes a kit, or if it's even possible to convert an E4OD to a full mechanical transmission... To operate like an AOD, without electronics. Seems to me, a mechanical E4OD, or rather, a 4OD would be a nice way to add an overdrive setup to any classic Ford truck or vintage Diesel... without the complication or expense of a controller or an overdrive unit. Seeing as overdrive units generally come with a $3000 price tag and are hard to find used, it seems like there should be a market for this (hypothetically speaking).

I promise I'm not high, just curious.

 

It's possible. You'll need to fabricate a governor and drive system on the output shaft. You'll also need to invent a valve body to shift the trans, along with a means of getting an engine load signal to the transmission. Cable, rod, and vacuum have been used in mechanical (we used to call them hydraulic) transmissions.

I expect if you found places that could work with you and cut you a BIG break on price you should be able to get the first prototype in a transmission for less than $10 million. Yes, I said ten million dollars. Designing the valve body, prototyping cast aluminum parts, machining the valve body and all the valves, the engine input, the governor adds up very quickly. If Ford were doing this inhouse it would be somewhere between $50 and $100 million. This is not a trivial project.

So yes, this is possible, but NOBODY can afford to redesign the transmission just for the purpose of making it work worse than a computer controlled transmission.

 

Hmm, I was thinking more along the lines of adapting parts already made to that transmission, such as the valve-body for the AOD... So on and so forth. I'm no engineer however, and I can see that you have a hell of a background in the field . Thanks for such a thorough answer to a silly question.

 

It would be a lot cheaper and easier to design an all new valve body than to try and adapt any existing valve body to the E4OD.