Learn How To Rebuild a Ford Toploader 4 Speed - Part 1

[Music] foreign [Music] Box video of 2023 and I have a surprise for you we're going to do a four top load of four speed now a lot of people have been asking me about doing a four top load of rebuild video and the problem with the Ford top load is extremely heavy it's all cast iron hard to ship and there's really not that many around so fortunately a man called me up his name is Robert Jackson he had one up in Northern Florida he drove it down to me it ran the one oil it seized up he tried to put a couple of these Transmissions together out of the parts he had it didn't work out and so that's what we have today on the bench so I don't know how long this video series is going to be maybe two or three videos I'm thinking probably about three possibly four it just depends on how it goes gonna try to keep the videos at around a half hour each as far as the length goes and let's get to it now please subscribe to my channel if you haven't more importantly always read the description in the video there's a lot of information there my contact information all that good stuff is all there all right so this is an old case this is the original case that he had and you notice a bolt pattern is very boxy this is an early design where it didn't have the ears coming out so it's an early case and pretty much they're all the same as far as the way they shift the shafts come out of the case all three shifts of shafts are on the side of the transmission it has a top cover right so that's basically what the top loader case looks like so first gear and second gear are welded to this main shaft synchronizer assembly is kind of stuck in the middle of them you cannot get them apart and if you see here how hot it got all gold up and blue so it's stuck doesn't rotate here either same situation you could almost see the heat marks over here and how it locked up so he had bought a new main shaft and another spare unit and tried to put it together didn't work out so let's take that unit apart you know it really does pay to check your oil levels once in a while avoid this type of stuff so to start taking the top load of four speed apart got to take obviously the top cover off front bearing retainer and extension housing top cover and the front bearing retainer have half inch head bolts tail housing has a 5 8 bolt and this little detent plug over here has a 3 8 head bolt all right so what we're going to do is just take this cover off first you want to take note of the length of the bolts okay there are two bolts that are usually dowel bolts or location bolts that are usually here and here I think so foreign see this one is longer okay there's another one over here I believe that's longer yeah that's the long bolt there I'm gonna put new hardware on this cover because this Hardware is pretty big so first off I'm looking at this transmission this transmission is locked up it doesn't turn there's no way I can even turn anything in here okay and the shifter shafts are kind of in neutral but nothing's able to move and the person told me that once they put the shooter together again it locked up and they couldn't move it anymore and looking at the gears it looks like second third and the main Drive the engagement teeth are pretty well worn which I'm going to gather the synchronizer assemblies are also worn so probably for anything second third in the input shaft are going to have to be changed first gear looks pretty good the engagement teeth are not too bad there's a problem with top loaded gears is they made these really fat wide gears but they use very tiny engagement teeth so the engagement teeth really should be longer and it was a poor design and that's why a lot of top loaders these gears will completely Shear off the the clutch teeth which is your holding power of the transmission so it's very important to look at these teeth if they're at all worn or banged up they're more than likely going with the crack and need to be changed and you can get new replacement gears they are made in Taiwan I don't care what anybody else says they're made in Taiwan and they're available and they're quite nice they work very well foreign can has a pretty nasty groove cut into it so that's no good that's gonna have to be changed so once I took the front bound retainer off you could see that the bearing is actually sticking up higher than it should be it won't go in and that's why the unit was locked up more than likely internally there's something going on with the synchronizer Rings or I believe the guy told me to put an aftermarket main shaft in it's possible that the aftermarket main shaft has the wrong spacing and something's off or it could simply be that they have the wrong Syncro dogs or Synchro keys in the different positions and it not worked out correctly but we'll figure that out one thing by the way these drain plugs are really annoying on these Transmissions because they're on the bottom and they make it very difficult for the transmission to stay stable on the workbench so that's not good so what we want to do is lay this thing flat all right without that plug in it makes life a lot easier and being that the transmission was already drained of oil it's going to be fine but sometimes a little piece of metal like this can help help keep it up a little bit better oh yeah so you do it like this there we go like that so now I'm going to do is I'm going to take the bolts off on the extension housing so there's five bolts here we go now we'll top load is come apart pretty much the same way they might have different size input shafts different length extension housings different spline main shafts but it's pretty much all the same all right there's your extension housing apart so when doing a top loader there's a couple of ways you can approach things and these are the ways that I found a little bit easier for me anyway to do you want to keep everything kind of together first and work at least getting The Shift Works apart and getting the detents out all right there's a detent over here some of the detents this is the one two detent over here it's in here with a screw in the spring and the 3 4D tent is over here on the side okay and the reverse one is buried inside the case on the bottom over here but the thing is is that if you remove the detench it'll allow things to float around a lot easier so usually I'll take the detents out first I'll take the forks off of the shift rails I just loosen them and I'll work on getting these rails out of place while everything is still in place so that I'm not kind of overloading and putting extra weight on this stuff like if I drop the counter gear down it'll take bearings out first then things are going to drop down on the rails and I don't want that I want to be able to slide the rails out really easy without having to have any problems in doing that so I try to like to keep again the gear train supported properly leave the bearings in place leave the counter shaft in place and then work on getting the rails out okay that's my logic so let's just now some of these just have a spring that's sticking up out of it like this some of the oral units just have a spring and the cover held everything in place this is a little bit better setup because you can actually make the detent action A Little Bit Stronger if you need to all right inside there is going to be a spring that we're going to have to get out and usually I use something like a file because it's got some teeth on it and I'm able to pull it out better all right that's the spring inside that is a detent which will come out when I actually take the rail out I don't need to take that out right now this bolt is a special size it's not as long as a normal bolt you see it's very short so you don't want to lose it okay these Springs by the way are the the same size all right if you see that the same size there's nothing different about them a lot of times what I'll do too is I'll take a piece of paper towel I've done this before and I'll just stuff these holes with the towel so I don't lose anything flipping things around all right just stuff that in there I do this because number one there are different size detents and interlocks in them so I'm just going to stuff this in here right now just so if I would have had little plastic plugs that would work fine too but I don't but this works just as well I'm using a 5 32nd hex drive now sometimes these set screws for the forks are really tight and sometimes you might have to try to get some heat in there to melt the nylon locks that are on side of them and the other times you might just want to shock them a little bit of punch so they loosen up because I've seen these rust into the forks especially if the unit has been sitting for a long period of time so what I'm doing here is I'm just loosening the 3 4 screw loosening the one two as well which looks like somebody stripped this one great all right it's catchy that's what they look like there's actually three of these One Foot In Reverse of fork as well all right I'm going to slide the upper rail out first you can hear that the one two Fork now is disconnected all right so here's what I do is I'll try to go in with a punch and just tap this rail loose and did a trick that I have if for example that the detent tends to drop into it it may not want to come through all the way all right so you may have to try to fish it out but let's just see what we got here foreign tapping this rail through you can see here there's another interlock pin in the rail I'll show it to you later on but let me just continue to try and drive this this rail out a bit I want to show you what's going on in the front as the rail comes through the front the cut plug is going to come out okay that's going to get changed now what I'll do is I'm going to just rotate the rail slightly and pull it out and I rotate the rail so that this kind of goes like this the interlock so it kind of goes clockwise and it doesn't drop down into the case all right all right so you can see our shift Forks are just kind of flopping around in here they'll get disconnected but they're actually very hard to just try and get out while everything is still in here you have to put them in place while the gear train is in there so the next step what I'm going to do is actually just drop the counter gear down so to drop the count of your down you have to remove the counter shaft you punch it from the front towards the back [Music] so while I'm pulling this shaft out this way I'm going to take my finger and just kind of hold up the counter here to take the load off the shaft so it slides out easy all right so now that the counter gear is dropped down I'm able to just pull out the input shaft like this normally there's needles in here but they must have fallen out in the bottom of the transmission we look at the shaft here looks pretty worn okay that's going to have to be changed we'll inspect some of the parts later [Music] these speedometer gears are held on with a snap ring and a Drive ball so snapping comes off here's the speedometer again this gear looks worn I'm going to see if that can be changed too foreign [Music] you want to take the snapping off for the rear bearing as well you see this guy had put a brand new main shaft in here it's brand new I could see it's brand new and for some reason it did not work out with the input you have gone by the way you can actually fish out the three four four Fork these Forks don't look bad at all not a lot of forks really don't wear as much as other forks and other transmissions because they run on a rail and it runs straight that's the advantage of this so the main shaft like this is nice and easy it floats better like this okay having it in this position and you could just put a cup on the top of it and then hammer down and just knock this out if you don't have a press so I could put this whole thing in the press and start working it a bit little by little to disconnect the the bearing from the output shaft very few people are going to have very long pullers to get in here I do have one but most of the people are not going to have a pillow to get at this so I'm going to do it the old school way which is how most people are going to be doing it you want to make sure that when you're doing this that you're not the gear isn't hitting the lower gear at all see now the bearing isn't fully off the main shaft but I can move the main shaft around and pull out the one through Fork now also I could use the case as kind of something to just support the rest of the bearing when I knock it through foreign these are the original bearings so now that everything is out there are certain reasons that this case has these little dimples in it and that's for clearance they actually pull the gear train out with it so what I'm going to do is it's very heavy so be careful that you really don't damage your hands anyway at all this is not this is not light by any means a lot of times I have to do is kind of put my finger here to keep the first gear from preventing it like that it's heavy bam that's the cluster gear or counter gear first gear thrust washer brush washers for the counter gear is one of your interlocks you want to fish it out from the bottom of the case and I'll show you how to set up the interlocks before we assemble the transmission one of the tricks on setting up the rails for the top loader will come during the assembly video so the next step is getting the reverse rail out so I have to take the set screw off for the reverse Fork all right and I'm very lucky that these are very loose most good quality rebuild kits have new set screws in them all right because this rail is under tension from the detent that's inside of the case over here the trick to getting this out is to rotate the rail which will push the detent down and then pull it out you can also remove the idler shaft if you choose to First and take the idle gear out doesn't matter either way whatever you want to do but again leaving this thing like this you see it's nice and free it's a lot easier to keep this in place so that at least the rail will be able to move easy so the back side of the rail is a flat portion over here you can put a wrench on it okay and rotate it like this what that's going to do is it's going to Simply push the detent down in an area where there's no notches so that you can pull this rail out these rails are soft so you don't want to damage them but just push them straight out foreign you can see what I'm talking about here so this is your interlock over here this is the detents for the reverse and so by just rotating it you kind of push the detents out of the rail so you can slide it out easy a lot of people Hammer the rails back and forth and then they end up damaging them because the d10 is not going to move all right so in my book building and modifying high performance manual transmissions I Do cover the four top loader in the book inside the book there's a bunch of detailed pitches there's over 400 color pictures on other transmissions as well but I go through the complete steps that we're doing now in the video in this book all right mentioned this coupon code right on the screen over here and you can buy it directly from me and I'll autograph it for you so a lot of times you don't really have to take this apart unless this idle gear is chewed up here but in general because I don't know what this person did I have to remove everything so I'll just get a punch in here and I'll start it like this usually it'll come right out that's a reverse Fork reverse shift foreign reverse gear is going to have needle bearings in it all right there's needle bearings and spacers try to keep them together if you're not using a small parts kit that has new needles and spacers in there thrust washers as well so now you can actually just pop out the shifter shafts three four reverse and the one two three four and the one two are the same size but I like to keep them organized as they should be pretty much our case is all stripped out completely case is all done we're gonna get that cleaned up and blasted so one thing I noticed right away is that the three four synchronizer assembly was on backwards the slider has identification rings on and it needs to be put in the proper orientation sometimes to clear the counter gear and it looked like somebody went over this with a a grinder actually and tried to make it thin Wellness come apart pretty easy there's usually no uh press bits really on the main shaft so to speak of so usually things will pry off pretty easy unless of course they've been they've been hammered on or whatever but they usually come come out pretty easy foreign [Applause] way too tight on this there's something wrong with this gear I think maybe somebody might have been beaten on this or whatever but something's not right here this gear has got a nasty lip in it just got hot too it's all damaged and spalled inside of here it's got a nasty Ridge in it so this gear the reason why it came off this tight because this was run low on oil it might have been in the old transmission that was there but it's all gold up this wouldn't ever worked it would have locked the unit right up that's probably what happened why it wasn't even turning also the gear is really badly damaged the engagement teeth on the gear are just totally shot this is the second gear snap ring and there's a thrust washer with a little key notch in it similar to the t176 I did second gear is off there's a snap ring in place that holds the one two assembly sometimes you need to use the pointy ones to get in here this is a very thin snap ring yes so somebody's been working on this thing this whole thing is bound up on here doesn't even move good all right so this this assembly is no good at all it's all banged up doesn't matter and I'm hitting this with a hammer because it's junk [Music] so this unit would have never worked uh the way they put this together this was a brand new main shaft that they purchased and with this assembly is really in bad shape [Music] all right the next and final step is to take the snap ring off the input shaft and remove the front bearing these are usually pressed on and I have to do this on the press and but the reality of it is I don't think I'm going to use this input shaft anyway so I'm just kind of showing you what has to be done and this bearing is bad you can feel it it's bad it's not in good shape at all and the rings of crap everything is just totally worn on this unit but this is something that you could expect from a 50 year old plus unit I want to just quickly show you something is that the keys for the one two are a longer than the three four Keys okay so it's important that you never mix them up one two and three four sliders are really hammered on both the one two and the three four input shaft is just a rusty mess put the engagement teeth are kind of okay but they're all distorted and bent already from I think what was happening was that these parts were running on the box that were starting to lock up and as a result everything started to twist on the load so we're going to need at least first second third speed gears input shaft one two assembly and three four assembly plus the gear looks in really nice shape counter shaft is worn you can see here the I'll warn the counter shaft is very badly worn so that's going to have to go to this is ready to just come apart it was really down to the the heat treat was pretty much done it was just starting to spoil already by the way for those of you who don't have a press it's a trick you could do it's it's all right to do this I just want to show you you can put the input shaft back in the case you're not going to damage the case the case is pretty strong you can put a socket over the input shaft so you don't damage this area and just with a soft mallet time right out that way all right this is bearing all right so there you have it top load of four speed completely disassembled this technique works for big block and small block top loaders long tail short tail all the same even the overdrive top load is typically found in like the 78 granadas that still had a side shifter with rods anything with the cast iron stuff the truck ones all works the same way so I'm going to truck ones have a little bit different bearing Arrangement but it pretty much again is the same technique same rail system everything like that's the same now in the next video of this series I'm going to go over the wear points of this transmission all the problems that it had and then I'm going to also go over all the little things that I find that people sometimes often Overlook so those are going to be included in the next video those are my little tips on building these units and so please please stay tuned subscribe to the channel and I'll see you soon by the way if you haven't uh read the description below pretty important information there as far as my contact information all my links are there in case you want to buy me a cup of coffee and buy me a coffee funds basically that helps me get some gear and get everything I need to make free videos for you guys thanks for watching all right thank you [Music] [Music]

Channel: GearBoxVideo

Views: 8,426

Keywords: How to rebuild a Ford Toploader, Ford Toploader repair, mustang 4 speed, comet 4 speed, torino 4 speed, transmission parts, manual transmission repair, Ford Toploader Rebuild, paul cangialosi, mustang toploader, 4speed, four speed, ford toploader, 1966 mustang, mustang repair, auto parts, automotive repair, muscle car transmission, automotive learning, auto mechanic

Id: xaRtV48XZtk

Length: 29min 22sec (1762 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 19 2023