off the beatin path

[Sunwings]

ok I know this is off the main here, but a friend has an 86 ford ranger with a 5 speed tranny. The tranny shifter has so much play in it, sometimes you cannot find the gears. we have replaced the plastic part in the shifter housing. the other one was gone. It has little less play in it. This is so bad that sometime in gear the shifter feel like it is neutral. I thought maybe posting it here that some one has some ideas or have had a similar problem. the tranny does work just fine no issues when you can find the gears. any help would be great,. thanks again.

[ultraranger]

ok I know this is off the main here, but a friend has an 86 ford ranger with a 5 speed tranny. The tranny shifter has so much play in it, sometimes you cannot find the gears. we have replaced the plastic part in the shifter housing. the other one was gone. It has little less play in it. This is so bad that sometime in gear the shifter feel like it is neutral. I thought maybe posting it here that some one has some ideas or have had a similar problem. the tranny does work just fine no issues when you can find the gears. any help would be great,. thanks again.

I have a good friend (Glen Buzek) that lives just outside of Houston that is a very reputable T-5 rebuilder. You could contact him to see if he has a solution (or the parts) to correct the problem.

http://www.rosehillperformanceparts.com. (you can tell him Steve Ainsworth sent you).

[basketcase0302]

Steve,

Wouldn't the 86' Ranger he's speaking of have the same Mitsubishi five speed in it I had in my 86 B2?
Is that a T5?

[eggman918]

I think I when I was researching the M5ODR2 for my cummins conversion that the Rangers had the M5ODR1...but
I do not remember where I saw that but thought I would throw it into the mix.

[ultraranger]

Hmmm... I guess I may have spoken out of turn on transmission type.

The T-5 came in various vehicles, the first use of the T-5 was in the 1981 AMC (American Motors Corporation) Spirit. The first use of the T-5 (non-world class) in a 5.0L Mustang was in 1983. First World-Class T-5 installed in a Mustang began in 1985. In 1990, improvements were made to synchronize reverse and better alloy gear materials were used through 1995, although '94/'95 Mustang T-5s had slightly longer input shafts and slightly deeper belhousings than '93-earlier Mustang T-5s. The Cobra, or Z-spec T-5 is the strongest of the T-5 family.

T-5s were also used in S-series Chevrolets, 305 Camaros & Firebirds, '89-'93 T-Bird SCs and the '84 Nissan 300 ZX but, the ZX doesn't interchange with Ford applications.

Here is some information on the manual 5-speed used in the (small) Ranger pickups:




http://www.therangerstation.com/tech_li ... ssion.html

[basketcase0302]

Trust me...it's a Mitsubishi! I had the one out of the B2 on four different occasions. Some yo-yo had left out the thin metal flexplate from between the tranny and engine. it would not hold a ring gear for over a month before the starter would grind all the teeth from it.
Another one of those "what's this Vern? I don't know Bubba-but we don't need it for the tranny to work" conversations I do believe...

[averagef250]

Those year Rangers were absolutely not T5's. They were Mitsubishi FM145/146 5 speeds. They look absolutely nothing like a T5.

The FM145/146 trannies are orphans, not many out there anymore. The last one I worked on I couldn't get any of the parts I needed to fix it. Maybe they're out there somewhere, but it was a $500 truck and not worth the time or frustration.

I don't remember what the shifter yoke looked like, but it should be somewhat self explanatory when you open it up. If something is loose, broke or missing fix it. There are thousands of different transmissions out there and thousands of times more strange problems they can have. Every problem can be figured out and repaired without a whole lot of skill. They're a box with shafts, gears and linkage.

[Sunwings]

well I am not at a total loss this transmission looks just like one in a s-10 except for the last part of the bell housing. I took the top p late off and they looked a lot different, this tranny i have looks like a very stout not some cast aluminum ones that look like a single piece of aluminum from a beer can. It could be aluminum , but after I pulled the top off the bolts looked like they came out of the engine block. very stout and could probably take some torque and the bolt holes looks they can hold up to to it as well. could this be some sort of hybrid? something they may have only used for a year or so? some here said it could have been a tranny they used in the diesel trucks they had for a couple of years. I never seen one , but he did show me a manual that had that option for repairs. I would try to identify this tranny by the tag , but it is missing. It does have a rectangular pan on the side , not the bottom. it resembles my big tranny in my truck except on a small scale, very small scale.