I forgot to grab a pic of the old pump, but I think its still on the table so I'll try to remember to snap one.

This weekend was almost successful... at one point I had the tail housing on and everything... If I have one recommendation to anyone doing this rebuild, its take your time, and make sure you follow the manual and videos to every little detail. Western Truck and Tractor Repair on youtube has a phenomenal 2 part video on this rebuild, and had I paid closer attention, I wouldn't have had to struggle so much this weekend and probably next. One of the last things installed on the main shaft to complete the center section of the transmission is a syncro hub and collar, then its a washer/spacer and a bearing that are both press fit. Well, that collar is one of, if I recall correctly, 2 collars in this transmission that are not symmetrical, and I put it in upside down. Now new bearing and spacer are on order, and I have to find a way to get them off of the shaft, hopefully without needing to take the main case off

 

the oil pump was not in good shape


found my mistake and a new output bearing should be here Saturday. Got the seats out, carpet peeled back and tunnel cover pulled. Saturday I’ll pull the E4OD and swap pedals etc. until the bearing shows up. I’ll get it assembled and sealed for install on Sunday!

 

very successful day today. Worked on it about 5 hours and got the old trans out, and the ZF6 finished up and stabbed in. The ZF6 crossmember has 1 bolt in each side. Tomorrow I’ll drill the rest of the bolt holes, toss the tcase in, mount the pedals/clutch master/slave, toss the driveshaft in, and drive it!

 

Well, I drove the truck to work this morning! I’ll grab some pictures tonight, but she lives! Drives awesome and shifts nice and smooth. The only issue I’m running into is that I need to figure out a way to wire in my clutch safety switch to my PCM so that the truck will start with the key. Right now I’m jumping the starter relay to get it going. Might just add a resistor to the auto harness to make it think it’s in neutral or park

 

Can you do mine next? Lol I'd settle for you pulling my trans and installing a TC though

 

Believe it or not the swap itself was fairly easy all said and done. Took about 12 hours of work to get it all apart and back together. If it wasn’t for having to rebuild this ZF6 it would have happened over a month ago haha. Although I will say that if anyone in northern Colorado has any projects that they don’t want to tackle and just want to pay someone to do it, my neighbor who is a diesel mechanic is opening up his own shop on the side to transition into having his own operation

 

How did you do the linkage from the BW1356 over to the NV271? Was it pretty much plug and play or had to modify it?

Did you have to shorten/lengthen driveshafts?

 

I’m using all of the linkage from the 271, as it pops through the cab in the same exact spot. Only thing I didn’t have was the shift lever itself which is slightly different so I ordered one. Not a big deal since I havent had the front driveshaft modified yet. The front shaft will have to be lengthened with the proper flange added to the tcase side, and the rear was actually lengthened an inch or two with a flange added in place of the slip yoke, because getting rid of the yoke took about 8” off of the overall length

 

Well, turns out the start up issue was an east fix. I never bought a clutch safety switch… so after throwing one in, the truck starts up great. Driveshaft shop said the front will be done by Friday. So I’ll be fully functional with just the reverse lights and 4x4 dash light remaining on Friday night

 

Here is an Excel spreadsheet that shows every part I had to buy, broken up by parts to rebuild the transmission, and parts to swap from the E4OD to the ZF6.

Ford Manual Transmission Swap Parts and Cost Spreadsheet.xlsx

Rebuild was a bit under $1,500, and swap was just under $2,800. The swap parts are all of the parts that I needed outside of the case of the transmission, that didn't come with it. Luckily, as shown somewhere way back in this thread, I bought a rolling chassis out of an 01 F-450 for $1500. I sold the flat bed for $1000, the axles for $500, and scrapped the frame for $100. So after that I had a blown up ZF6, NP271 (still haven't tried shifting that to see if it is in good shape), crossmember from the F-450, trans cooler lines, the driveshafts from the F-450, and $100 in my pocket. The $100 covered the tools I needed to buy/rent for the rebuild, so my costs were entirely from parts. All said and done it has cost me $4,196. That cost is worth it to me. A BTS or Sam Wyse built E4OD would cost more than that, and I would not be as happy, as I love driving with 3 pedals. There is no doubt that the rebuild was the most complex automotive task I have ever done. Luckily, between the service manual and youtube videos, all of the information you could need is out there.

One thing I really did not find any information for, is the swap itself. It seams that a lot of people incorrectly state that tons of floor modifications are needed to fit the ZF6, which makes people shy away from the swap. Here is a little breakdown of everything that was done to make this happen:

Removal of the E4OD: Drive shafts had already been removed and dropped off at a local shop for modifications. Removed the down pipe to allow a little wiggle room. Disconnected the Neutral Safety Switch and shift cable. Drained the transmission and T-Case, and disconnected the transmission cooler lines. Removed the starter. Pulled the T-Case off, hooked the transmission to the floor jack (with a transmission adapter) and pulled it out. My truck has a 2" lift and is sitting on basically stock height tires, so with the E4OD on the trans jack, I had to jack up the front of the truck about 1'-1.5' in order to clear the frame as we slid it out. The 1.5" spacer between the motor and trans needs to be removed, as well as the spacer at the crank. Then I cut the soft cooler lines at the front of the truck where the hard lines tie into the radiator.

ZF6 Install: On the interior, I pulled the front bench out and peeled the carpet back, then removed the transmission tunnel cover. I also removed the shift cable at this time, and reinstalled the boot for the floor that it passes through, and siliconed the hole inside to seal it up. Install the 1/8" spacer between the transmission and motor, then install the flywheel. For the pilot bushing I opted for an oil impregnated brass bushing rather than a standard pilot bearing. This is a dry area, and a roller bearing is not ideal for that scenario. Then install the clutch. After this, we jacked the front of the truck up as we did to get the E4OD out, and slid the trans into place behind the motor, then lowered the truck back down. As we mated the transmission to the motor, I was able to see that it is a VERY tight fit to the floor. Once mated we began to see how the crossmember would work.

Crossmember install: I used the ZF6 crossmember, which wraps the bottom of the frame and bolts to the outside on one side, and on the F-450 the other side slides into the frame, and bolts to the top of the bottom flange of the C channel. with another bracket that bolts to that and then bolts on the inside of the vertical leg of the frame. The only difference on the OBS truck is that the crossmember will bolt on the under side of the frame. I was able to use smaller hardware through one existing hole on each side of the frame to hold it in place, while I drilled out all of the other holes to accept 1/2" grade 8 bolts. Then I drilled out the smaller existing holes to match the rest. At this point, with the transmission in its final place, I reinstalled the starter.




Interior work: Once the transmission was in place and crossmember tightened down, I noticed that the heat shield which overlapped about half of the trans tunnel hole was contacting the transmission. I trimmed it back to the edges of the hole, and no longer had any trans to body contact. We then started working on pedals and clutch master cylinder mounting. In order to access everything, we removed the gas pedal, and removed the brake pedal. Then when it came time to install the clutch master and clutch/brake pedal set, we unbolted the brake booster to allow a little more room. Also disconnected the steering shaft and pushed it down into the firewall. Everything then mounted up like normal.



Clutch master/slave install: The firewall has a cover plate where the clutch master goes, once it is pulled, it will bolt right into place. The master cylinder and clutch line need to be the parts made for an OBS truck, and those went on first. With the line installed I filled the reservoir with fluid. The slave is for superduty truck. The slave came as a prefilled unit with a master cylinder. I pinched the line by the slave and cut it, this allowed the slave to stay full of fluid. Then installed it on the transmission with the pinched line still attached. We then placed the open end of the new clutch line inside of a bottle of DOT3 and pumped the clutch pedal to bleed the line, topping off the master as needed. Once the line was bled. we pulled the old line from the slave, and installed the new line as quickly as possible to avoid allowing air into the system. Then pumped the clutch for a little while and topped off the master as needed, to complete the bleeding process.




T-Case and Driveline: Install the NP271 as you would normally. Then pray that the measurements you took of a disassembled ZF6 ends up working out. The slip yoke on the driveshaft needs to be removed and replaced with a flange for the NP271, and overall length adjusted. I must have done something right, because mine bolted right into place. I hooked up all of the linkage that came with the NP271 and ZF6, and ended up directly under the stock hole in my body. However, the shift lever mounts to that linkage differently from the previous linkage, so I ordered a lever from a superduty truck. Could have modified the existing one, but I just did not feel like it. The existing boot is also in rough shape, so I ordered a new one of those. Then i filled the transfer case with fluid.



Cooler lines: I had the cooler lines from the ZF6 in my garage. I measured where they would need to be to get close to the soft lines I had cut. Then cut and flared the hard lines. If memory serves me, the ZF6 lines are 3/8" and the E4OD lines are 5/16". I picked up a few feet of 3/8" trans cooler soft line, some barbed fittings, and hose clamps from the parts store. I then installed a small chunk of soft line on the hard lines, and mounted them in place on the truck. Then trimmed the lines to fit, and installed the barbed fittings from my new 3/8" line to the existing 5/16" lines with 2 hose clamps on the loose side of each barb for piece of mind.




Electronics: This part has been easy so far. I bought new tunes from Jelibuilt that are for a manual truck. Burned them onto my chip, and reinstalled. This does everything you need in order to convince your truck that it is now a manual transmission. The only thing I did not think of in advance was the clutch safety switch. I did not buy one, so the truck would only start from key on, jumping the starter relay. Picked up a clutch switch yesterday and now I am good to go. This weekend I will look at the auto wiring harness thats still in the truck and see if I will be able to tie in the reverse lights to the reverse switch on the ZF6 as well as the sensor on the NP271 that lights up the dash for 4x4 and LO. I have the ZF6 harness in the garage, so if possible I will just splice the connectors from that onto the existing harness.
this is the clutch safety switch on the shaft. The wire harness was there from the factory.


More interior work: After everything was bolted together on the underside, and all of the necessary interior work was done in terms of functionality, I pulled the fill plug and pulled the shifter off of the top of the transmission. Then I filled from the top until fluid was coming out of the fill plug. Reinstalled fill plug and siliconed and reinstalled the shifter. Then I used body adhesive to seal the trans tunnel cover to the cab, and bolted it back in place. Then I rolled the carpet back over everything, and cut the hole for the shifter. After that, I installed the shift boot and lever, tossed the seats in and went for a drive!

All said and done, the swap has taken 12 hours of work for 2 people. One person (me) has decent automotive and fabrication experience, but no experience with transmissions or really swaps of any kind. The other was a friend who is a master mechanic that specializes in Diesels. I could not be happier with the outcome of this swap. I have fallen in love with this truck all over again. If I had to do it again, and had more money, I would have paid someone to do the rebuild, but the swap was a fun weekend hanging out in the driveway. Now I need to pick up a manual trans column cover, and decide what silly words to print on a sticker to go in front of the dash where the auto trans indicator shows what gear you're in. I'll take some pictures in one of the coming days, and try to slap them into this post to help show what all was done


Old stuff


Final interior pic

 

Excellent data for folks that consider how to do this.

I bypassed the clutch switch on my '96 and the '92.

 

Well done man! Pics pics!

 

Ask and you shall receive! That post has been updated with pictures! Let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see that I didn’t take a pic of

 

Well, found out that the NP271 is not in good shape. Runs great in 2hi. But last weekend I got the front driveshaft and shift handle in, and gave it a shot. The weight of the handle itself is enough to pull it from 4lo all the way to 2hi. So I guess after my trip at the end of the month I’ll pull it out and open it up. Luckily, I already have a rebuild kit sitting on my work bench

 

Edited that long pose because I was wrong haha. Jumped to worst case scenario. With a bore scope I was able to determine my new leak is my HPOP gasket