The 49 to 54 transmissions are a Ford design. They are actually a further development of the synchronized transmission designed for the 1932 Ford. Yes, they are simply a Ford transmission with overdrive.

The T85 and T86 are Borg-Warner transmissions as are the R series overdrives (I am aware of R8, 9, 10, and 11 overdrive units starting from the 1930s).
The 1949 and 1950 Ford transmissions are shorter than the 1951 transmission which is shorter than the 1952-1959 transmissions. Even though Ford switched to the T86 for lower power engines in the mid 50s, the mountings are the same. I have bolted a 56 T86 into a 52 sedan. It is important to know which year and design transmission you have if you need parts since lengths, spline counts, etc. changed over the years.

 

Mine is like the one from 49-54 but I have a 56 ??? and it says OD on the chassie plate aswell.

So someone might have switched it ??? but I have seen these transmissions on more 56´s so ......

This seems clear as mud

 

It has a seperate fill plug but they drain from the same bottom plugg and they share oil.

My rear seal was bad before and the oil dissapeared from the gearbox aswell.

Have had it completley appart and changed seals everywhere.

And if I'am not mistaken there is also a oil hole....

 

It does get muddy LOL. I have the same trans as yours although not original to the truck, I installed it. But I have also seen the same trans in other 57-60's but don't know if that was original or not either. I have also seen the same trans with a short tailshaft and housing.

 

It was 20 years ago that I had mine apart and I don't remember the oil hole. I was just quoting what the BW manual for the R10 said to fill the OD unit separate with 30W oil. Also in the link provided by 1963 mercury if you look in the technical section it warns about using synthetic oil in the OD's.

 

I know the last post in this thread was a decade ago, but I went looking for information about T85 transmissions and this came up. Since this is a referenced thread in a Google search, and since I just got done doing a T85 swap, I figured I would share more information here in case someone else comes looking.

I did this on a 1963 F-100, but I think it is representative of the same efforts needed for any 1953 through 1964 T85 swap into an F-100. My F-100 is a factory overdrive truck assembled by Ford with a T86 transmission equipped with an R10 overdrive.

I did this for three reasons. The first reason is the gear ratios. I found the stock gear ratios in the T86 were not good for truck use. First and second were not geared down enough and I was abusing the clutch just getting the truck moving. Second, I wanted the stronger T85 / R11 combination. Finally, the factory transmission was worn out. The truck has over 200,000 miles on it and it showed in the transmission, it would even jump out of first gear on mild acceleration.

I started with a T85 / R11 overdrive transmission from a 1960 Ford Galaxie hardtop. I bought the transmission from a wrecked car in a salvage yard about 20 years ago just to have a spare T85. Last year I took it to a friend's house and we tore it down.

1960 Galaxie T85 transmission disassembled

Then I got out a gear set from a late F-100 T85 with a lower first and second ratio. We cleaned everything up and played mix-and-match to get the truck gear set into the car transmission. We installed new bearings, brass synchronizers, and two out of three thrust washers (there is a late truck specific thrust washer that is not manufactured and I couldn't find one new; eventually I bought three parts transmissions to find a usable thrust washer). Everything went together eventually and looked good.

Assembled car T85 with truck gear set

The project moved to a different friend's shop with a lift, and we proceeded to pull the worn out, greasy transmission. I found my next problem, the truck front bearing retainer I had installed was larger in outer diameter than the pilot hole in the bell housing. The car bearing retainer fit into the bell housing, but the car front seal didn't fit over the truck input shaft. Measuring for size and digging through a seal catalog resulted in a surprisingly thin seal that fit and worked. Next up was the difference in throw out bearing size. The truck used a larger diameter throw out bearing than the car, and the sleeve portion of the front bearing retainer was too small in diameter.

Rebuilt T85 next to original T86. Front bearing retainer diameter is too small for the throw out bearing.

I took a couple flathead Ford transmission front bearing retainers, went to a friend's lathe and bored out the inner diameter until they just slipped over the T85 retainer, and cut them off to make two sleeves so the stacked length matched the T86. The transmission modifications were complete with the sleeves epoxied onto the car bearing retainer.

T85 car bearing retainer sleeved to work with truck throw out bearing.

The next modification was the throw out bearing. The later truck T85 input shaft is shorter than the factory T86 input shaft. I knew this going in and purchased a conversion pilot bushing that is longer to make up the distance. The pilot bushing diameter was too large to fit into the flywheel, so that portion of the bushing was turned down on a lathe to fit. The end result worked well, with the pilot bushing sticking back further than factory to fit with the shorter input shaft.

Longer pilot bushing used to make up the space for the shorter input shaft.

What I didn't anticipate was the longer pilot bushing interfered with the clutch disk hub. I did some quick measuring and decided to perform "surgery" on the flywheel side of the clutch disk hub using a cut-off wheel and a pedestal grinder. First I cut down the hub using the cut-off wheel, making sure not to get the hub hotter than I could touch to keep from changing the temper of the metal. Then I carefully ground down the remaining high spots until the clutch disk would sit flush with the flywheel. The final result wasn't particularly pretty, but it worked.

Flywheel side of the clutch disk hub cut back to clear the longer pilot bushing.

After that the transmission bolted in. I purchased a new driveshaft yoke that matched the splines of the 1960 car T85 transmission output shaft and the length of the original yoke. I bought a yoke for a 1330 u-joint since it was noticeably more affordable than a yoke for a 1310 u-joint, then bought a conversion joint to mate the yoke to the factory drive shaft. Everything assembled with no drama and the final result has much better gearing than the old T86.

Car T85 / R11 transmission bolted in place of the factory T86 / R10.

 

Nice write up And pictorial. Well done, Fred.