Ok i have been looking over some of the past threads and am getting confused. I have been thinking about puting a t5 into a 58 f100 with a 223 I should be aquiring soon. It has the four speed tranny currently. I know that the bell housing has to be modified. after that i get confused. Which trany would i look for? ford? Ch@by? I know there are ones with different gear ratios. and i think the s10 t5 has the better shifter. Do the t5 bolt up the same to the bell housing even if you go with differnet manfactures? is the s10 trany the one to look for? I also want to use the mech spedo so I know i would need to find a trany that would allow for that. Also what about the clutch? is is a hyberd thing or do i use the ford stuff? I would guess ford pressure plate, cheby disk and the bearings i have no idea on. Also i dont guess there are just an alum adaptor plate instead of the bell mod? anyone have anymore info? link, or anything else would be great. Thanks

 

I'm not sure what kind of bell housing the 223 uses so what I am using on my 302 may not work. Others have mentioned in my T-5 thread adapters for a hogshead but I'm not sure what that is. Maybe ther are some adaptors for yours.
The reason I did not go with the S-10 tranny was not so much strength but the gear ratio of the first gear. Typically they are very low. The only reason for using the S-10 tailshaft housing is to get the shifter into the correct location. Don't know if that is needed on a '58 of not. It definitely is for a '53. Hope it works out for you. Keep us posted an what you do.

 

Maybe this will help - all T5 trannies are made by BW and are basically the same externally. The mustang tends to be "World Class" in the strength department while the S10's tend to have the standard strength gears and bearings. Find any T5 that was behind a V8 and you'll be good. The lighter varieties will also hold up unless you stand on the gas frequently.

Both will work for our projects. The mustang T5 has the shifter located at the back of the tail housing - between the bucket seats - not good for a bench seat in pickups. The S10 uses a shifter location closer to the top-loader position and almost right on target for our pickups with bench seats and floor shifts. As I understand it, you can swap tail housings and top covers between the S10 and Mustang T5's, thus gaining the wc gears/bearings with a center mounted shifter.

Pre '82 (I think) you get the mechanical speedo gears/cable. After that it's electronic speedo.

Adapters sold by a variety of mfgr's bolt between the transmission box and the bellhousing. Some guys refer to the bellhousing as a 'hogshead' due to it's shape.

If you use the S10 tranny, use the chevy clutch disk to match the splines on the input shaft - everything else can be ford.

This doesn't cover every detail, but should get you going in the right direction.

 

Here is a link to an adaptop that should fit your engine and use the Ford WC T-5.
http://www.ford-y-block.com/yblockpage.htm

As Tim stated the Ford T-5 is Tailshaft is longer but can be changed to a shorter S-10 T-5 with Mech. Speedo.

 

The holy grail in terms of shifter position is the Astro Van T-5, which has the shifter virtually dead on in the position of a 48-52 3-sp. Naturally, not many people bought an Astro with stick shift, so they are rare (I've never seen one for sale or at the boneyard).

One question I've never seen answered (need to check out Dick's link) is what you do for a rear tranny support on the '53-on trucks, that have the bellhousing support for the engine. You end up with three engine/trans mount locations, which is generally not desirable from an engineering standpoint. (You can't determine which support is carrying what load)

No question that the '53-on are a breeze to install a T-5 in, compared to the 48-52.