Manual SWAP 12 Valve Cummins I Which Transmission is Best?

[Music] [Applause] what i want to do in this video is tell you all about the different manual transmission options for these trucks and give you some information that could help you decide which transmission would be best for you for your purposes and how you use your truck as well as maybe your budget a lot of this stuff you may know but i would almost guarantee that some of the stuff i talked about you have no idea about so stay tuned hopefully you like the video let's get into it so matching up a manual transmission to a 12 valve cummins is not a hard thing to do the harder process is figuring out which transmission to go with now in this video i'm really only going to be covering the manual transmissions that were ever offered by dodge we're not going to get into the eatons and the zf5 and the zf6 we're going to stick to the dodge offerings one because they're the most popular for these trucks and budget wise it's the easiest way to go so to start out with the first manual transmission offered behind the 12 valve cummins was the get drag the g360 this transmission was offered in 1st gen cummins from 1989 to 1993 but it was a popular transmission before that it was used in many gm iterations prior to that and they made some different changes to it to made it behind the cummins now i'm sure you're aware that you hear polar opinions about the get drag some people hate it and think it's a piece of garbage and other people love it and swear by it me personally i've never had any issues with them i actually think it's a great transmission they're fairly easy to find they have decent aftermarket support and rebuild kits they're cheap they hold up to decent amounts of power and as long as you know how to drive them they hold up pretty well the big issue with the get drags are the synchros and the way you ruin your synchros is lugging the transmission with heavy load so you have to know how to drive especially when towing but these transmissions do hold up to a lot and there's a lot of people that prefer this transmission the get drag over the next transmission we'll talk about the mv 4500 the envy 4500 was offered behind the cummins from 1994 to 2002. this of course is the years of the second gen cummins now if you follow production numbers at all you know that first gen cummins production numbers are much lower than second gen cummins production numbers so with those high production numbers with a large range of years that it was available the nv 4500 is a very good transmission it's very easy to find it's very easy to find parts for it's fairly inexpensive i've never rebuilt one personally but i've heard it's not the most difficult transmission to rebuild they hold up to power pretty well and uh most people love them they do have one issue that's very common with them and that's the fifth gear nut basically if you you're lugging the truck in fourth or fifth gear hauling or under load that fifth gear nut has a tendency to work itself off back off and then you lose fifth gear you lose the transmission it grenades it's a problem but the transmission's been around so long at this point there's many companies out there that offer fixes for that fifth gear nut so if you're planning on putting an nv 4500 in your truck or if you're gonna buy a truck with an nv 4500 you need to ask the question has the fifth gear not been fixed if it hasn't been fixed you need to fix it before you throw it in your truck or if you buy a truck with one in it you need to fix it pretty early in that time period of owning the truck now both of those transmissions are five speed options behind these 12 valve cummins they're both good transmissions in my opinion yours may differ but i'm sure you're not watching this video to find out what five-speed transmission to use the big complaint among the consumers about these two five-speed transmissions was the big gap between third and fourth gear especially if you're hauling a load so that's when dodge started offering a six-speed option i know i know there's only two six-speed transmission options from dodge right wrong i'm about to convince you that there are actually four iterations of the six-speed manual transmissions from dodge so with that let's start talking about the nv 5600 the first six-speed manual transmission offered by dodge the envy 5600 was offered from 1999 to 2005 and if you know your trucks you know that that spans some of the second gen cummins range up into the third gen cummins range now when it was first released it had a 1 and 1 8 inch input shaft this became a problem very quickly with the torque of the cummins the consumer feedback was that this input shaft was not adequate for the torque of the cummins so they only offered that version with the 1 1 8 inch input shaft from 1999 to 2000 so two years in 2001 to 2005 they started offering the nv 5600 with a 1 and 3 8 inch input shaft now this version was much better much more style it held up very well to the abuse this is the version that everyone wants so if you're looking for an nv 5600 make sure to try and find the version with the one and three-eighths inch input shaft not only is it a stronger input shaft but for that earlier model because it wasn't very sought after there's very little aftermarket support for it either so parts are hard to find people don't really use them or want to rebuild them so they just don't have that demand the other consistent feedback about the nv 5600 was how stout it was it weighed in at a whopping 360 pounds and to give you some perspective the envy 4500 and the get track both weighed around 195 pounds so 360 pounds it was huge it has a full cast steel housing which is very stout and very robust and it holds up to a lot of abuse now 2005 was kind of a cool year where they offered actually the envy 5600 and the g56 technically the g56 was a 2005.5 offering but during that model year you could have either of those transmissions now the g56 started being offered in 2005 and a half like i said and was offered all the way until 2018 so it had a very long production cycle this was a mercedes-benz product and in my opinion it's a great transmission as well now from 2005 and a half to 2007 they also responded to some consumer feedback when those models were in production people were using them the feedback was it was geared too low specifically reverse was geared too low and overdrive was geared too low so this model from 2005 and a half to 2007 is known as the ad model the ad model was geared lower for reverse and overdrive and in 2007 and a half they came out with the ae model which is geared slightly higher in reverse and slightly higher in overdrive those are the only two differences between the ad and the ae model so depending on what gear ratio you're running whether you're towing more whether you're commuting with it whether you use it for a daily driver that should be information that drives your decision behind which transmission you want if you're towing a lot that a d model with the lower gearing may work really well for you or for a first gen guy if you've got 307 gears the ad model would be perfect for you but if you got 410 gears in that ad model you're going to be struggling to hit 65 miles per hour whereas with the ae model that may be a good match up for you the biggest overall complaint with the g56 transmission was the aluminum casing that it was built out of people complain that it's a weak point of the transmission now i'm gonna kind of try and change your mind on that a little bit yes it's made of aluminum so hence it'll be weaker than steel what happens is if it's not built correctly or you're abusing it and putting too much power through it the gears inside actually break they shatter and that's what explodes the case so the case isn't the weak point it's actually you're putting too much power through or you don't have the transmission built for the power that you're putting through it but if you have it built properly the case is never an issue because all the internals can handle that power so if you're running more than 550 600 horsepower through your truck the g56 is not going to hold up to that especially in stock form you need to get it built by a known builder if you're running numbers north of that the nv 5600 with the larger input shaft is actually a really good option and is known to hold up to those numbers now if you're trying to figure out what six-speed transmission a truck has if you've come up on a truck and you can look inside of it the main visual difference between the envy 5600 and the g56 is the shift pattern so in the envy 5600 the reverse gear is in the very top right corner and in the g56 the reverse gear is in the bottom left corner so if you look at the knob or if you can feel the shift pattern that's how you can tell the difference between the two transmissions without crawling under the truck and trying to visually see which one it is so now we get to the point where i tell you what transmission i chose and why so i have always loved the g56 transmission my dad bought a brand new 3500 dually in 2007 with a g56 in it and ever since i drove that i have loved the transmission i think it shifts smoother than the nv 5600 personally but that's up for debate as well so i knew i wanted a g56 i knew about the two different models the ad and the ae i have 354 gears in my truck i haul with it occasionally but really it's just kind of a daily fun driver so i was fine with either model but i really wanted the ae model because i wanted a better highway speed better fuel mileage and i knew even when i do tow it's never more than ten thousand pounds so it's it's not a big load anyways that's when i set out to find one and i did i found an ae model that i'm going to be swapping into the truck in the next video through a series of videos it will be awesome there are very few first gens out there with g56s in there there's some good write-ups on the forums that i've used to follow this process and learn how to do it but this may be one of the very first video series on putting one in a first gen cummins i don't know but it should be fun i hope you guys enjoyed this video i hope this information was valuable if i misspoke on anything or if there's anything else you know that maybe i don't know about the different manual transmissions comment below let's help each other out and learn from this topic i hope we can have a good discussion about it in the comments thanks for all your support on the channel and we will see you guys in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Decent Garage

Views: 114,096

Keywords: cummins, 12 valve, 1st gen cummins, first gen cummins, getrag, g360, nv4500, nv5600, g56, manual transmission, manual swap

Id: 1EHnPEA6fJ8

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 19 2021