Some of my friends always talk about how their cars manual trans can hold upwards of 500 hp(probably not accurate estimation but thats what they say).Anyways it got me curious, what kind of power can the 05-09 v6 manual trans handle reliably? Always wondered and just wanted to know when it would start break.


Thanks in advance

 

Anybody?

 

It can't hold the 200 hp it has stock. Really though, it is a sorry trans, when you start to build power it will go.

 

Ok thanks, so if I were looking to do FI in the future I would definitely need to get the GT trans?

 

250 ish, the T5 is decent. Most likely the clutch or the rear will be the first thing to go. If your not planning to run it at the track very often it should be fine 'if' you stay on street tires. If you plan to run stickey tires then don't expect it to hold up too long assuming the clutch & rear are upgraded first. The weak link is first gear so hard launches are going to kill it. I'll post more info on alternate gearing options when I can, need to run out now until late toinight.

 

Thanks for the info. I just ordered 4.10 gears but they shouldn't affect the transmission at all right?

 

Yes when you go FI you'll want to put in a GT trans. I know plenty of people on this board have ran the T5 with FI and to be honest I'm not sure how they did it. My T5 is god awful.

 

Haha ok good to know thanks for the help

 

yeah from what I have heard about the T5 is that it is garbage. I had a thirdgen GTA Trans Am, and back in the day you could only get a 305 with a T5 because the stock 350 TPI would blow it up. I dont know how different they were back then, but it was **** then and most likely **** now.

 

The T-5 has been around a long time now and there are may different iterations out there from 4 to 8 cylinder applications. Its not the smoothest but it gets the job done. You can get a nice history of the T-5 here compiled by Modern Driveline. They also offer high performance T-5 versions. In order to get more torque multiplication on the weaker 6cyl cars 1st gear is pretty low making it weaker and subject to breaking in power adder applications. With 4.10's & power adder, which I now have, that low first is not needed to get you moving and it hurts overall performance, the inherent weakness is just a time bomb waiting to shear apart the first time I hit the bottle off the line. Modern Driveline offers a T-5 with a higher 1st and greater overdrive gearset. This makes it a lot stronger and more drivable overall (with the new rear gear or FI). This is the same set up that Shelby put in the Terlingua Mustang (s/c 4.0 for those unfamiliar). A new T-5 set up for the S197 will run me around $1800 so I'm leaning towards doing it when I have the money or have a broken trans:-)