Stock Mustang 3650 fabricated into a face plated 3650

Hey everyone, I know I am not as big as any of you into this sport. Im just a little bracket racer but I just wanted to show you my work. About mid way through the 2010 season, I got the natorious 3rd gear synchronizer problem in my TR-3650. With starting a new family I did not have the funds to buy the upgrade kit for the 3650. After talking to my dad, we decided to face plate my transmission. All of the work was done my me, on manual mills and lathes with the exception of the tig welding. That was done by my father.

Started out by blue printing the dog rings to get a rough idea of where to start milling

Dog rings were made out of 8620 raw stock

The gear side in process




The Slider side for engaging 2nd gear



Turning down the gears to remove the synchronizing teeth and for the shrink fit of the dog rings

Once the correct tolerances were made for the shrink fit, the dog rings were put in the oven and gears put in the freezer. After a while they parts were mated together



After the were cooled down, they were put back on the lathe to be faced to proper size




For the 3rd-4th slider, we made a whole new slider. we turned the sides down of the stock on so just a hub and splines remaind and then mated the 2 and tig welded them together

during some test fitting, we ran across some clearance issues that were easily addressed





once the clearance issues were fixed, the rings were welded to the gears instead of just relying on the shrink fit



All the parts ready to install


Re-assembly

The trans was put together with the stock shift forks. We new they would not last but we were not sure for how long. I had been messing with a clutch stop to only engage it enough to make the quick shift. It however gave me issues with 3rd gear. This, i think weakend the shift fork and on July 8th of 2011, it decided to let go.




It took out 4th gear with it. After analyizing 4th gear, we decided it was not strong enough so we started over.

Machined off old dog ring


Machined down 4th gear to make a thicker hub



Machining new dog ring






once the dog ring was done, the input and ring were mated and faced down


Ring welded to input


Getting ring up to 1500 for oil quench heat treat

after oil quench, the input was placed in an oven at 500* for 3 hours for the annealing process. This is the input after it came out


By comparing the old and new inputs, you can tell how much beefier this new one is

old:


new:

Took the car out for a ride a while back, first time this transmission has seen actual street use other than trial runs down our dead end road. Well, the slider we modified for 1-2 did not hold up real well. I down shifted a little too early to make a corner and it never felt right after that. I dicided to try a WOT shift from 1-2 and this is what happened



Busted all the lugs of the slider clean off. So we dicided to go back to the drawing board and do the same thing we did for the slider for 3-4. Only this time we were just going to have the center splined to match rather than mating the splines of the factory slider to the new piece, but no one would get back to use about it and I got tired of waiting.

Machined factory slider


Machining new slider




New slider and old splines mated together


As you can see, we also decided to upgrade from 4 lugs to 8 and also made them thicker since 2nd gear takes more abuse as far as load with down shifting and also starting the burnouts in 2nd

The trans does have to come out this winter. The slider we made for the 1-2 didnt have enough clearance and doesnt allow me to do a WOT shift into 2nd. So it will be getting a little machining done to open it up a little

I don't know what half that stuff is, but you guys did some awesome work there!!

240sxguy wrote:

I don't know what half that stuff is, but you guys did some awesome work there!!

Exactly what I was thinking.

Heres a good article to read that talks about the face plate. Bob Hanlon had been a big help with us working out some of the bugs with this thing

http://www.musclemustangfastfords.com/tech/mmfp_1009_hanlon_motorsports_tremec_tko_600_transmission/viewall.html

Wow thats crazy, major props for the fabrication skills and the balls to try something like that

Are you a machinist?

yes i am. Started working for the family business when I was 10 and progressed from there. Now working for my dads business in the mornings and my full time job as a machinist at night

240sxguy wrote:

Are you a machinist?

No but he did stay at a Holliday inn express last night.

Correct me if I'm wrong but this is taking the original gears and giving them dog teeth syncros to make them able to shift a lot harder w/o breaking shit isn't it?

I saw a guy trying to get a place to do R&D for this on my getrag trans. That fell through but this is very cool!

pretty much yes. They are a pain to drive on the street but the cats ass at the track

i build honda transmissions and this is some very cool stuff your testing. if you want your dogs and gears to last you will need a strain gage on the shifter and setup it up properly. hats off to you man looks great.

can't say enough about how awesome this is!

This is awesome. Good pictures too!

Stock 3650 for the loss haha, been there. Awesome stuff your doing. Good luck.

IMPRESSED

mr.johnson wrote:

i build honda transmissions and this is some very cool stuff your testing. if you want your dogs and gears to last you will need a strain gage on the shifter and setup it up properly. hats off to you man looks great.

what exactly do you mean by strain gage? You mean for setting it up so it doesnt shift the slider too far?

I know one cool thing I saw for that type of trans shifting is a strain gauge in the shift lever that when you pull on the shifter it kills the ignition so you can really bang gears

oh, I dont have to worry about that with the faceplated trans. It slides in like butter at WOT without have to cut the engine between shifts

heres a video of the first trial run with the car last year.you can hear it making a lot of noise. Had some interferance between teeth on the dog rings



http://www.streetfire.net/video/faceplated-tr3650-trial_2229201.htm