I chose it because of the .69 OD.
My requirement was a 6000-series spicer 5 speed with the .69 OD, since I had my doubts about the 3053A handling that much torque, and I figured if I was doing it once, I'd get lowest OD I could find. My Ford-bequeathed 3208 came with a 6052 behind it, so my bellhousing is a swap. I had to get new clutch plates for the 1.5" input and a new throwout bearing for the bigger bearing cap but otherwise it's a swap. Oh yeah, I turned down the end of the input gear to mate up with the smaller pilot bearing but that's mostly because I didn't want to have to pull the old pilot bearing.
6855 has all new bearings, however. It's a joy to manually shift it into OD and see how much the output shaft cooks.
Now, I'm running into a serious stumbling block because the shift tower is in the wrong place. The shifter bolts into the tower at the front of the tranny, basically where it mates up to the bellhousing. For reference, this is even IN FRONT of the bellhousing. At that far away, I couldn't even bend up a long ass "ape hanger" style shifter, you know? I need it AT LEAST at the midsection of the tranny to get any sort of leverage on it. I am now in the unenviable pòsition of having to fabricate a new shift tower. I'm sure that a shift tower is available to put the shifter in the right place but that type of part is rarely in the affordable range.... it would be in the "buy the tower and get the rest of the tranny for free" range, I bet.
I was shooting to use this thing as the tow rig for Easter Jeep Safari, but after the shifter problem, it's something of a deal breaker. Also, I need to outboard the steering, and it turns out that if you just stick a steering box right on the OUTSIDE of the frame rail where the stock box went INSIDE, you pretty much eliminate right turns because the freaking tire starts hitting it immediately. I'll need to relocate fender support, move the box really far forward, but at a certain point, the gosh darn front leaf spring becomes another interference part.
I suspect I'll have another month of bodging parts together. Right now the biggest issues are steering location and the tranny shifter position, but then I still have to deal with throttle linkage, clutch linkage, radiator location (using the bigger radiator off the ford, since it's, say, 70% bigger than the deuce rad), a little more plumbing, but on the bright side, plumbing mostly "figured out", and the engine is pretty much mounted.
I would wager that I'm going to go through alot of argon fabbing up some extremely custom parts in the next few weeks. Oh yeah, and where you were able to relocate the compressor? It's a no go for my arrangement. I'll be putting a "blower dent" in my hood to accomodate the air compressor. I think, though, I'll have an actual body shop do the sheetmetal right, though. After all is said and done, I'd really like to do Implement Yellow ghost flames and door stars on a flat black paint job. That's the goal.
Maybe a Yellow racing stripe as well.
Bob
