So..... I'm dirtier then I have been in a while but:



So tomorrow I go back to finish it up, install a catch can on my valve cover breather and trim off about a 1/4 inch from the rear muffler hangers that after i get to operating temperature elongate enough to bounce off the frame in the back of the bumper and make a terrible noise.

Some things to note:

The hydraulic line going to the transmission is not self sealing. You pull the pin about 3/4 of the way out then the line pulls out from the top. Have something hand to catch the runoff or you will wear a large amount of fluid as you make a bowl with your hands and send your father-in-law off in a mad dash to find something to catch it in.

If you have a supercharger that is nice and tall and sits close to the firewall, the motor can not really tip back to allow you to extract the transmission. Don't spend 2 hours trying to wiggle, pry, kick, or pray your transmission out. Theres just not enough room between the body and the block to make it happen. Instead, take about 25 minutes to relocate your jack stands to your frame rails, get a jack under your k member, loosen the back screws out till there only held in by like three threads, take out the front 4 nuts (above the wheel hubs) and lower the whole motor / front suspension about 2 1/2 inch's.

The before mentioned body is still in the way, so don't spend another 30 minutes trying to wiggle, pry, kick, or pray your transmission out. Instead spend about 30 seconds, get your man hands ready and rotate your transmission to about the 10 O'Clock position, this gets some much needed clearance away from hydraulic fitting in the driver side, and some odd bulge on the passenger side. Slide it back the rest of the way then and drop it down.

If you do not have a transmission jack..... Well Meguiver one but be real careful, transmissions > most parts of body. It will win every time. We used a motorcycle jack, 3 one foot sections of 4 x 4, and a small ratchet jack. All I had to do was take the push handle off the jack to get it to slide under the car.

Although the wood blocks gave the jack the added height I needed to get up to the tranny, it also prevented me from being able to lower it enough to take the tranny out from under the car. Again, use man hand here. I had like a cross stack so there were two of the 4 x 4s spanning the gap in the jack, and one running length wise under the whole tranny. Lifted up on the bell hosing, rotated the board out so it was just under the rear, set the front down, lifted rear, pulled out the top 4 x 4, puled out bottom 4 x 4, set rear down, lifted front, pulled out front 4 x 4 and set the tranny in its resting place on the base of the jack, and rolled it away. Sure a nice tranny jack would have been great but this was free and the way we had it set up, though hard to picture in your head, was pretty safe.


Well off to the shower, still wearing a lot of that fluid and the wife wont let me in bed like this... lol, I will post some updates tomorrow as to how the rest of the project turned out. hopefully these small words of advise not really advertised in other places saves someone some frustration one day. All together, though time consuming, the clutch isn't nearly as hard as it is made out to be.


.....Now I just need to figure out what fluid goes where for that clutch and figure out how to bleed it >.<

 

It will be worth the work!

 

your helpful tips will no doubt help
the next guy, when he decides to tackle
this.

thanks for sharing your experience and i
hope everything goes back together, without
too much trouble.

 

I've heard before that having a twin screw blower complicates the clutch install.

Someday it would be cool if a writeup were done on this. Clutch installs are a ton of work so maybe that's one of those things that's to complex for a writeup. Dunno. But I would like it.

 

thanks for the tips...so it might be a smart idea for me to throw a new clutch in there next year before i do the blower install...especially as i am likely to run the RoushCharger.

I would have been a p'd off ****.

 

yeah can u write up a how to for taking off the tranny and stuff. thanks..

 

Good luck on the install. It's a pain I know but the hard part is behind you now.

FYI Hammeron did a writeup some time ago titled "McLeod RST Installation". It's a sticky in the 4.6 section. It covers all the big roadblocks.

Another FYI, if you go forced induction might as well start planning the clutch install because it becomes a necessity.

 

Thanks for the writeup. I was told the saleen sc'er would have to come off to do a clutch install. Good to know that isn't necessary.

 

That clutch is so pretty! Thanks for the tips!

Clutch installs is something I'd rather not do without a lift handy. Working under the car with just jackstands on something this major is scary for me.

 

Well its in, fully functional and grabbing good. The rest went pretty much without incident. Knowing how it came off we mirrored the process on the way in and it slid right in. We were amazed, we both thought the spline would be really hard to line up but we lucked out and it slid right in. Got behind the tranny, wiggled it and pushed. It went in about 95% on its own then we just put the screws in and made sure to cross tighten them so the front of the spline seated into the bearing no sweat.

Also, if you follow fords priming procedure for the clutch system, they tell you to draw vacuum then pump 5 or 6 times and repeat. Turns out if the vacuum pump you get doesn't have a cap that fits you can sit there and pump the clutch about 70 times and it will pretty much prime it self. I plan on taking to the dealer and asking them to just draw vacuum on it for me to see if any bubbles come up, but judging by the feel to the foot test, I would say it is fine. Also made good progress today so I got a catch can installed. For those of you who don't know what that is or haven't done one yet, ESPECIALLY if your forced induction..... GET ONE. There was a ton of oil in the line and dripping off the factory fitting when I pulled it off.

@ Riptide and Blk05Stang: Yeah the supercharger made it hard but like I said, lowering the K member made all the difference in the world. The whole assembly ended up with much more clearance and it wasn't too difficult to get behind the supercharger to get at the top bolts for the tranny.

@ 2007CalSpec: yeah, it was harder to do on the floor with jack stands and stuff, but if you get it set right, its not going anywhere. The way I did it, with the rear wheels set on drive-ups, it allowed me to set my ebrake and be relatively sure it wouldn't roll when I started jacking the front. I set a scissor jack under the drive-up also, so if there was some sort of catastrophic failure on the ramp, it would fall on to something. In the front I had two 3 ton jack stands, just make sure they are fully engaged before letting the weight down on them. Then I would let the hydraulic jack down so the weight was fully on the stands. Then I jacked the hydraulic back up so it was touching my jack point. So if the stand came out it would only fall far enough to get itself set on the jack. Its good to have at least two methods on each end so if one fails your not instantly crushed. Also, keep a phone under the car with you.

To all about the writeup: Unfortunately, yesterday and today I forgot my camera, so my words and the one shot with the camera phone were all I could get ya. If you have any specific questions about how to do something feel free to ask. I loosely followed the Ford service manuals found here:
http://iihs.net/fsm/?dir=259
The only thing is, when they made the manual, they probably had it all apart siting on a bench or something.... There is no reference anywhere to any clearance issues or moving anything else out of the way. But hopefully thats where all my tips in the first post will fill in the gaps for you ;-)