Project Overdrive


This is a website to post information about Project Overdrive.

Project Overdrive's goal was to replace the C4 Cruise-o-matic Transmission in my '65 Mustang Convertible with a modern, 4R70W 4-Speed Automatic Overdrive transmission that is electronically controlled and features a wide ratio gear set.  This project gave me a lower first gear, a higher final gear, a computer to infinitely adjust all the transmision's functions, and the most satisfaction I've had on any of my mustang projects.  With the 4R70w installed, this car drives like a dream.  I put this thing together, and I haven't stopped smiling since.

I will caution you that this swap is not for the faint of heart.  However, I think anyone considering installing an automatic overdrive in their Ford should consider the AOD-E/4R70W and its many benefits.  I hope you find this page useful in sorting out most of the issues, so you can know up front what the project entails.  You will probably think of a few things you want to do different than I did.  I think you'll find this page gives a good account of what's involved in this exciting conversion, and solutions to many of the issues that arise.


 
 

Parts I purchased:

 

Project Overdrive Shifter

Figuring out how to use my stock C4 Console Shifter

This Shows the '98 4R70W out of a wrecked V6 Mustang.  I also found a used '98 Mustang shifter. I got it on Ebay complete with cable.

The plan was to figure out the necessary travel on the cable to shift the 4R70W.  See that lever below.   I needed to figure out how to attach this cable to my stock C4 shifter with the proper lever arm to get the same total travel from Park to Low as this Ford shifter for this transmission has.  That wasn't too hard.  Then I checked the detent position for each gear to see if the C4 shift detents would work.

This is the other end of the cable.  You'll note it is EXACTLY the same as the stub the junkyard left on the tranny.  Proof positive that I was on the right track!

I went out to the barn and measured the linear distance the cable stub moves on the 4R70W between each detent of the shifter lever.  Then I set up Phil's Shifter Laboratory in my basement and measured the linear distance a stock c4 shifter moves between detents.

Note that a C4 shifter actually allows quite a bit of variation on most gear settings.  These are denoted by minimum and maximum numbers.  A sheet of paper, a calculator, and the law of sines let me convert the linear measurements to angular displacements of the shift lever.  Then I calculated the proper lever arm to give the necessary total travel with the C4 shifter to move a shifter cable from Park to Low on the 4R70W.  Finally I calculated where this lever arm would put the cable at each gear detent to see if the transmission could be shifted into the proper gear, and be in the correct detent on the shifter.  Here's the data.
 
Shifter Design Worksheet
GEAR
P
R
N
D
2
1
4R70W Cable travel at shift lever inches
0.000
0.375
0.690
1.025
1.390
1.730
Stock C4 Shifter Lever rotation min angle
0.0
5.5
10.0
18.2
26.8
32.2
max angle
0.0
5.5
15.6
24.5
30.7
35.0
Stock C4 Shifter travel 3.40 arm min inches
0.000
0.327
0.599
1.118
1.718
2.141
max inches
0.000
0.327
0.948
1.550
2.019
2.380
Modified C4 Shifter travel 2.60 arm min inches
0.000
0.250
0.458
0.855
1.314
1.637
max inches
0.000
0.250
0.725
1.185
1.544
1.820
CENTER
0.000
0.250
0.592
1.020
1.429
1.729

 

What does this mean?  Well...if my calculations are correct, if you attach the end of the 98' shifter cable to the C4 shift lever so that the centerline of the cable is 2.60 inches away from the pivot point, you'll get the cable travel shown under "Modified C4 Shifter travel 2.60 arm".  The distances for the "4R70W Cable travel at shift lever" all fall into these ranges except for REVERSE.  So with no modifications other than installing a bolt in the proper position to attach the cable to (and a support bracket), the shifter will work for all gears except REVERSE with no modifications.  The fix for the REVERSE problem is shown below.

Finally, I wanted to figure out if it is possible to put my control electronics either in the shifter or near the shifter.  The '98 shifter has an OD cancel button.  The Baumann box will accept an input from this (either a momentary contact or a toggle) to lock the tranny out of OD...or to use it to manually shift from 3 to 4 on the highway.  Also, the Baumann box allows you to use a 12V input to switch between 2 user-programmed shifting strategies.  I wanted to get a switch and indicator light somewhere to allow me to toggle between "putt around town" and "full performance" modes.

The next step is modifying the C4 shift lever to actuate the cable, and figuring out exactly how much to relieve the detent plate so R ends up in the right place.

This is kind of hard to see, but I made this little adaptor to shorten the effective lever arm of the C4 shifter and hook it to the cable.  While experimenting I found that I was correct that the effective lever needs to be shorter...HOWEVER it didn't appear to need to be AS MUCH shorter as my calculations showed.

This is my test mule shifter cabled up to the 4R70W sitting on some fashionable transmission stands.  Saw horses you say?  No way man!

You'll note that I've built an "erector set" cable holder out of some steel channel. I had to figure out how to do this properly in the car as well.  What I've got here is just for mock up purposes.

As you read through this page you may get a little confused about how this project came together.  I've tried to keep the various sub-parts of the project together on this page, even though they overlapped somewhat as the project came together.  Please bear with me on this.  For instance, the next picture shows the transmission in the car.  I haven't skipped a bunch of steps.  I'm just showing you the next piece of the puzzle on the shifter conversion.  Further down the page, I go into how I went about pulling my stock C4, and the other work that happened before the picture below, but didn't have much to do with the shifter itself.

After I got the old C4 out, I was able to see that my 1965 console shifter's arm was different than the one I had been working with for some time.

That's my '65s shifter on the left, which is straight.  The shifter arm on the right is from the '66 floor shifter, and it has an angle.  Also, I saw that one of the studs there at the bottom had fine threads and the other had coarse threads.  Also, you can see that the '66 shifter arm had a big hole in it with a bushing in it (removed here) while the straight arm from my '65 had a small hole.  Due to the bend, the arm on the right is much longer at first glance.  However, if you look at them closely you see the overall horizontal distance from center to center on each arms is exactly the same.  The '65 arm was very close to the tailshaft housing once the 4R70W was up in the tranny tunnel, so I elected to use the '66 arm on the right to get more clearance. I got a new nut to match the threads but other than that it mounted to the shifter lever in the same manner as my old one.

 

Next up was modifying the '66 lever to set it up to actuate a cable.  The '98 shifter uses a ball stud to go through the hole in the cable-end.  I just used a bolt.  Since I wasn't sure exactly how long of a lever arm I needed to make the shifter perform flawlessly, I elected to go with a slot to mount the bolt through.  This allowed the bolt to be adjusted up or down to dial in the shifter properly.  To make the slot, I welded up the old hole, drilled new holes at either end, and then worked the slot out by hand with my dremel.  Here's what it looks like.
 

Next, I mounted that arm in my stock console shifter and hooked up the cable to the transmission to begin tuning it in.  This required a cable mount under the car.  The easiest solution was to fabricate a bracket and hook it to the underseat convertible brace.  It is very close to where the end of the cable needs to be held.  On a fastback or coupe this bracket could be mounted via welds or rivets to the floor pan.  Or, for the person that really wants a slick installation and isn't afraid of fabrication, the absolute BEST way to do it would be to make a large sheet metal piece that would bolt to the bottom of the stock shifter (do you see those studs sticking down from my shifter base in the picture below?) and extend backwards.  That's how Ford hooks the cable on current mustangs.  The shifter base has the bracket built right into it.  Anyway here's my bracket I made from a 1 1/2" wide piece of 1/8" angle.  I added a gusset at the 90 for additional rigidity.  It is at the top in this picture, but is hard to see because the cable is in the way.  It is mounted to the convertible brace with short #8 sheet metal screws.

When I put my driveshaft in, the yoke hit the shifter bracket.  I ended up grinding about 3/8" off of the right side of what is shown below.  Then, I got my BFH out, along with a short bar and a pair of channel locks and wacked that cantilevered part so that it now bends around the front contour of the convertible brace just a smidge.  I probably moved the centerline of the shifter cable about 1/4" to port.  That gave me 1/4" clearance between the shifter bracket and the humongous end of the stock 1998 transmission yoke (see pictures elsewhere on this page).

This setup shifts the 4R70W like a champ!  I'm very pleased with the shift action...nice and smooth!  While the convertible brace made it easy to mount the bracket, it presents a big problem for routing the cable itself.  I fastened the cable to the convertible brace with two clamps.  This was to keep it from getting over into the exhaust pipe.  I sure don't want this thing to melt on me!

Do you remember way back in the Shifter Design Workshop, I said Reverse would be a problem?  Well, after I got the transmission in and shifting to every gear...Reverse was in fact a problem.  It would shift in and out of reverse fine with no modifications to this detent plate.  However, the reverse detent was in the wrong place, so you could do all that shifting in and out of reverse without ever touching the shifter button.  Good enough?  Probably.  But I just couldn't leave well enough alone.  If you look to the right of the detent plate you see a big tooth sticking up.  That's the forward stop on the shifter.  The little peak just to the left of that keeps you from shifting out of park without pushing the shifter button.  The valley just to the left of that is what I cut into the detent plate.  That's my new Reverse detent.  You'll note that once the shifter is in Reverse, it cannot be shifted out without pushing the button, now.  It is possible to slide the shifter from neutral to reverse without using the button.  The forward gears are protected from reverse by the stock detent you see to the left of my new Reverse detent.  This modification took about 15 seconds.  I did it in the car with my angle grinder.  The position is fairly critical.  I was only able to make this move after I had the tranny hooked up and shifting properly and was able to determine exactly where reverse needed to be.

That's pretty much "it" for my shifter conversion.  It actually worked out pretty slick.  Once I got my console back in, it seemed to me the little bullet light on the shifter wasn't lighting up the shift indicator as well as it could...so I ended up sticking a shim in with it to angle it backwards slightly.  This made gear indicator light up better.  I guess it has always been that way...because it was off on Park too, and Park is exactly the same place as it's always been.

When driving the car my BIGGEST problem shifting is I almost always shift to 2nd rather than drive.  Is that just too funny?  After 6-years of driving the old green-dot Cruise-o-matic, it seems so bizarre to shift to the top dot for drive rather than the second dot.  6 years ago I made the classic Newbie mistake of driving my new '65 vert around in the "normal" position for the first 6-months I owned the car...wondering "why oh why won't my car shift into first gear".  Now I can't get used to having Drive be in the same place it has been on every car built since when?  1967 ?  Sheesh!
 
 

Project Overdrive Speedometer Hookup

Figuring out how to use my stock Speedometer

This has been the MOST CONFUSING part of the project so far.  I've received so much information on the speedometer hook up, much of it conflicting and a lot of it just flat out wrong, that it was really making me doubt I wanted to even use the 4R70W.  I was getting a whole gamut of responses from the "experts" that ran everywhere from "it'll plug right in" to "it can't be done" to "you can do it but it will cost an arm and a leg".  In fact, the solution wasn't hard at all.
Here's the plug in that came with my 4R70W.  It does not have any sort of mechanical hook up.  It's set up to accept a pigtail from the '98 Mustangs electronic speedometer.  Are you beginning to see the problem?  Or IS IT a problem.  Let's continue to research.
I took the encoder out of the transmission.  That's it on the bottom.  I sourced a junk stub off of an early C4 cable (which should be identical to the one I already have on my '65 Mustang) to see what the deal is.  That's the junk stub on top.  OK, what will the bottom one look like if I take off the clip and the gear.
Huh.  Other than the fact 37 year old one has a cable and 4 year old one has an encoder, they look remarkably similar.  You don't think that gear will actually fit on the 37 year old cable stub do you?
Well Alllllllll Beeee.   Same gear.  Same clip.  The O-Ring is in the same spot, at least to the naked eye.  If it fits in the new tranny, then "Game Over, Dude" this MIGHT be easier than anyone thought!
This is a grainy photo of my index finger.  Oh yeah, it also shows the old style cable stub, with the 4R70W's speedometer gear snuggly fitted into the transmission.  The sealing surface is identical.  The bolt hole on this bracket even matches up.

The only change I ended up making to my stock speedometer cable was that I switched my old gear out for the one that came with the 4R70W.  On initial testing I measured a couple of mile markers with my odometer and they seem to be a mile apart.  My latest checks I made, with the help of my son David,  indicate the speedometer is off about 5%.  The speedometer indicates about 58 MPH at an actual 55 miles an hour.
 

Project Overdrive TPS

Figuring out how to mount a Throttle Position Sensor.

I listed the part numbers above for the Throttle Position Sensor that Baumann Engineering recommended I buy to use with their TCS.  This has been surprisingly expensive.  The local auto parts store sold me the right TPS for $51.00.  That's just the sensor itself.  The wiring connector for it was located through my friendly General Motors dealer's parts counter.  On our THIRD TRY we got the correct "Connector Replacement Pack" which plugs into the TCS.   This will allow a "factory tight" connection under the hood...rather than some sort of mickey mouse arrangement that might come unhooked at a bad time.
 
When considering the best way to actuate this particular TPS, I couldn't get past the thought that GM had already engineered a way to actuate this thing properly and installed it in about a blue million Oldsmobuicks during the mid-eighties.  So, I got on ebay and found a junky looking throttle body for an '86 Fiero.  The darn thing cost me half what the new TPS sensor did, and IT CAME WITH A TPS SENSOR!  I got a hacksaw and cut away everything I didn't need from the Holley throttle body, mounted it to a one inch spacer with holes to match those already in my intake manifold, and welded a actuating lever to the butterfly shaft (what was left of it that is).  Here's what I ended up with.

 
There's not much left of the GM throttle body.  Really just the mounting bosses for the TPS and the main shaft that used to open and close the throttle body.  Now, the throttle plate is gone and 90 percent of the throttle body.  The other thing that shaft used to do on a Fiero was actuate the Throttle Position Sensor.  That's the only thing it needs to do now.  The actuating rod is a long throttle return spring I picked up from the HELP section of the local Autozone.  That piece on the right is a lever extension to hook to the carburetor to get a little more motion out of it.  I tried using shorter lever arms, but with no leverage, I was getting too much extension on the spring.  Anyway...this thing seems to work like a charm and it's robust as all get out.  Here's what it looks like mounted on my intake and hooked to my 4160 Holley:

When the stock throttle rod pulls back, that rotates the whole lever assembly on the Holley.  You'll note my little lever extension is bolted on the bottom there.  That in turn pulls the spring.  The force on the spring is small enough that it doesn't stretch.  It just starts rotating that lever on the that little bit of piece of Pontiac back there.  That rotates the shaft which has a little lever on the back side that is engages the TPS.  The TPS rotates backward in harmony with the spring moving forward.  At about 98% throttle the TPS bottoms out on the "full open" stop, and the spring stretches to let the carb advance a hair further to WOT.  Voila!

I've got some more information on the TPS below...but one thing I should point out here...you want the TPS to be advanced slightly at idle, and to be all the way to it's stop just before the carb goes to WOT.  In my setup, I have a set screw holding the spring end on that shaft it runs through on the right.  To set the position of the TPS at idle, I just loosened the set screw, rotated my arm there slightly, and then tightened the set screw down on the spring end.  Pretty slick!
 
 

Project Overdrive Teardown

Removing my C4 to make way for the 4R70W.

I must admit I had never pulled a transmission before I took this one out.  However, I didn't find it all that hard.  The first thing I did was make a table for my floorjack out of 3/8 Steel to support the transmission.  I MIG welded a 1/2" stud to the bottom of the steel plate.  The stud has a hole drilled in it for a cotter key that holds it to the jack, and allows it to rotate.

I got the car up in the air as high as I could using four 6-ton floor jacks.  These jacks extend to a maximum of 24".  I supported the car under the rear axle, the front frame rails, and under the engine crossmember.  I stuck a couple of smaller floor jacks in under the rear axle too...just to add a bit more safety and stability.  You'll note I had to put a concrete block under one jack to get it up tight to the axle.  This is a no-no, as you should ever use concrete blocks to support a car...but here I'm not really using that jack to support...it's just extra.  24" is bare minimum clearance to do this project.  A couple more inches would have been even better.  A lift would be a Godsend.  Oh God, please send me a lift!  AMEN!

The first thing to take out is the drive shaft.  This is very easy to do.  I removed the 4 u-joint nuts shown below, shoved the driveshaft forward just a bit to allow the driveshaft to clear the rear yoke, dropped it down, and pulled it backwards out of the C4.

Below you see the '65 driveshaft and yoke on top and the '98 driveshaft I bought from Mustang Parts Specialties on bottom.  I bought the '98 driveshaft just to get the yoke.  It only cost me $20, which was much much less that buying a new yoke.  This yoke was required because of my '98 4R70W's tailshaft housing.  There are at least a couple of different flavors of tailshaft housings on AOD/AOD-E/4R70W transmissions.  It is my understanding that they are interchangeable from one tranny to another...but I thought the easiest thing might be just to get the right yoke, and then have a driveshaft shop make up the proper driveshaft to couple the stock '98 Yoke to my stock '65 8" rearend.  You'll note that the '98 Driveshaft on bottom is much shorter than my '65 driveshaft.  The 4R70W is longer than my old C4...but it isn't THAT much longer.   It took a little custom work to make it all come together.  I put the tranny in the car and then measured to get the proper length for the shaft before I ordered it.  Also note the big damper on end of the 4R70W driveshaft on the bottom.  That damper was what was hitting my shifter bracket.  It's much bigger in diameter than the old one.

After pulling the driveshaft, I got back under the car and started disconnecting stuff.  First up was the kickdown rod shown here.  I also clipped the homemade transmission cooler lines that went to the radiator.  I made up new lines for the 4R70W.  Once I clipped the lines at the radiator, I dropped them into a bucket, started the engine, put the tranny in gear, and let it pump out about 2 quarts of fluid into the bucket.  It took maybe 30 seconds to do this.  Then I shut off the engine.  That might not be a completely safe thing to do...but this C4 is in desperate need of a rebuild at this point anyway, and I figure that's 1/2 gallon of AT fluid I won't be soaking up with oil dry at the end of the day!

This picture shows my TCP subframe connector and underseat convertible brace I installed during last years "Project While I'm At It".  If you've read my page, you remember that I didn't include a picture of this...so here it is. You can also see the bolt on convertible brace, which has to come off to allow the exhaust to drop.  I took all the exhaust hangers loose and the collector bolts out, so it could drop down to allow the transmission to move down.  My crossover pipe is under the C4's tailshaft, so this was necessary.

I also disconnected the parking brake and the speedometer cable.  I removed the starter.  I unplugged the wiring from the tranny at the plugs on the firewall and removed the vacuum modulator-vacuum line.  Next I removed the torque converter access cover at the base of the engine plate to start taking the four torque converter retaining nuts loose.  These nuts are accessed one at a time, and then you have to spin the motor 90 degrees to access the next one.  The motor is spun with a socket on a short extension on a 1/2" Ratchet.  When I did my engine build up during "Project More Power" I buggered up my original torque converter by damaging one of the studs.  Heat is the best lubricant for these nuts.  I didn't have any problem with these nuts this time, but I was prepared to use a torch to heat them if required.

Once I got the torque converter loose, I went ahead and put my modified floor jack and some cribbing under the tranny to support it.  I took the transmission crossmember off.  Then,  I took the remaining 4 bellhousing bolts out (I took the two top ones off before I jacked the car up.  I've got long arms...but they ain't THAT long.)  There's also a little bolt that holds the block plate to the block that has to come out.

The torque converter holds a lot of fluid.  Here I've got it draining into that bucket I mentioned earlier.  In the background you can see the floor jack all the way to the floor...and the transmission is too high to do anything with still.  I ended up jacking it up an inch or so, supporting either end of the tranny temporarily with a jack stand under the bellhousing, and another supporting the tailshaft, and then dropping the jack clear, so I could take all the wood off.  Then I jacked it back up and supported the tranny right from the steel plate.  Then I dropped it again, this time without the wood holding the C4 up.  I could have just drug it out with brute force...but I decided to move it with brain power THIS TIME.

Here's the tranny out from under the car.  Without the torque converter this thing wasn't heavy at all.  It's about 110 pounds.  It was no problem to pick it up and move it over next to the 4R70W.

Here's a good shot.  That's my work bay in my barn.  The car's up.  The C4 is on the sawhorses next to the 4R70W.

Here's a better shot of the transmissions with the C4 on top and the monster 4R70W on bottom. The 4R70W is a lot heavier than the C4.  The best I can tell, this swap added about 75 pounds to my car.

Next, I took the 6 flex plate bolts off to remove the old flex plate.  The flexplate bolts WERE NOT removable by normal human power.  I had to use an oxy-acetylene torch to heat them up before I could get the to budge.  6 new bolts were included in my Windsor-Fox hardware kit...so they went in to replace the old ones.  One note of caution here.  These bolts have to have sealant applied when you put them back in.  That might be why they were so hard to remove.

And here's a happy camper in from the barn after pulling his first transmission.  Yes, I used safety glasses...but I still got dirt and oil everywhere.  I was also wearing coveralls.  They sure do help to keep SWMBO happy!  (In case you're wondering...I took a picture of the bathroom mirror...that's why my Big Brothers shirt reads backwards.)


 
 
 

Project Overdrive Blockplate & Flexplate

Starting to put all the pieces together:
Now if you've looked at my list of parts I bought, you've no doubt noticed I sourced a used AOD flexplate and AOD blockplate.  This picture shows the difference between the C4 Flexplate and my new (used) AOD Flexplate.  Note that the AOD/AOD-E/4R70W all use the same 164 tooth flexplate.  The size of the flexplate must match the transmission.  The balance of the Flexplate must match the engine.  You may be aware that small block fords come in two different balances.  Vintage small blocks used a 28 ounce imbalance on the flexplate, while newer 5.0's used a 50 ounce imbalance.  The C4 flexplate is on the left below.  It has 157 teeth and measures about 13 3/8" in diameter.  The AOD flexplate is on the right.  It has 164 teeth and measures about 14 3/8" diameter to the outside of the ring gear.
You also have to change the block plate to an AOD block plate.  Due to the bigger gear, the starter is going to sit about 1/2" further to starboard...so the old C4 block plate will not work.  I got this used, along with the AOD inspection cover, from a guy on  The Corral .  That is a really great place to find all kinds of late model mustang parts for good prices.
Below you see that 164 tooth, 28 ounce imbalance flexplate being installed.  The bolt holes only line up one way.  I have installed the C4's retainer plate between the new Windsor-Fox bolts and the flexplate.  As you recall, I mentioned earlier, these bolts MUST have an oil resistant sealant brushed onto the threads before you install them to prevent an oil leak around the threads.  I dusted off my 1965 Shop Manual and found the torque specification for these bolts is 75 to 85 foot-pounds.  That's A LOT of torque.  Whenever I tighten up anything critical like this, I always step my way up to torque by hand tightening everything, then using a ratchet to lock the bolts down to a bit more, and then using the torque wrench in a criss-cross pattern, moving from say 30 foot pounds to 50 foot pounds to 80 foot pounds.  This assures I don't warp anything.  80 foot pounds with my little 3/8" torque wrench is A BEAR.  I had to pin the flexplate with a screwdriver through one of the holes (to keep the engine from turning), then get the handle into bench press position.  Once you have something really solid against your back (like the planet) you can click over 80 foot pounds with ease (unless of course YOU'RE A COMPLETE WUSS!)
The next thing I did was hack off these two primary machining locators near the back of the case.  Per Greg at Baumann Engineering, these things WILL hit the tunnel on a '65/'66 Mustang.  These are pads Ford's Transmission Plant uses to locate the case for machining.  They serve no purpose after the case comes off the machining line....so I hacked them off with a cut off wheel, and then worked them clean with my 4 1/2" angle grinder.  The shop towel is there to keep aluminum dust out of the electrical connectors below.  The tailshaft housing flange there was very close to floorpan crossbrace after I got the tranny up and level in the car.  I ended up working that flange down a bit too, just to add a little more clearance to the floorpan brace.

There are also two machining locators that stick out sideways from the bellhousing face that aren't needed.  I cut them off just on general principal, in case they might be in the way of the new exhaust system.
 

That's what it looked like once I got done grinding.   Then I moved to the other side of the case and hacked that one off too.  After this, I moved the tranny under the car on my floor jack and tried to move it into position.

I should point out here that I installed the transmission twice when doing this project.  I put it in to identify where the problems appeared to be, fabbed up the new crossmember and figured out what I needed to do to make a cable bracket for the shifter.  I also looked to see where the wiring harness was going to need to enter the passenger compartment and figured out where the wiring harness would be once it was installed.  This was necessary before I could start splicing the wiring harness into the TCS...because I needed to know how long all the wires needed to be.  To figure out how high to jack up the back of the transmission, I bought a magnetic level at Lowes, and used it on the engine, the frame and the transmission.  Once they were all at the same angle, I measured from the floor to the transmission mount surface, and recorded that number.  That was the angle I wanted my new transmission mount to hold the tranny in.

I also when up front and measured the distance my fan blades were from the radiator at top and bottom to make sure this angle kept the fan parallel to the radiator.  Everything checked out, so I felt confident with my dimension.

Let me continue to show the installation of the 4R70W in the car.  Just realize that these pictures are out of time sequence here.

4R70W's use Mercon transmission fluid...and A LOT of it.  The stock capacity is 12 quarts.  I actually added 13, because there is also ATF in the cooling lines and the radiator.  You are always supposed to put a quart of fluid in the torque converter before you install it.  Otherwise it won't pump up and you'll have to pull the tranny again.
 

Most torque converters are tough to get all the way engaged...and this one was no different.  When you install a torque converter you just have to keep working it until it goes all the way into the transmission.  It will eventually go in so that the front of the torque converter is recessed a full inch from the transmission mounting face.  Screw this up and you'll end up breaking your bell housing trying to get the tranny to draw up to the engine.  I've never done that...but plenty of other people have.

You'll note that I have the wiring harness done here and in place.  I plugged everything in before I started jacking the tranny up into position.  In my case, I had to wait until the tranny was under the car before I could install my new dipstick and o-ring...because my car wasn't high enough to clear it otherwise.  One brief aside here, the dipstick ends up being mounted to one of the transmission bolts on the passenger side of the car.  To put my headers in from underneath, I had to take that bolt out and rotate the doglegged dipstick in the transmission to get enough clearance to get the header up into the engine bay.  I didn't have to take the dipstick all the way out, and once the header was in the car and the dipstick rotated to the proper position and fastened...it wasn't in the way of the exhaust.

This is the same thing from the other side.  I just went slow and steady.  This transmission weighs 200 pounds empty...so I was trying to be careful here and not drop it on my head.

Hopefully, if you do this swap, you'll remember to turn all of your flexplate bolts to 12:00, 3:00, 6:00, and 9:00 and rotate your torque converter to match before you get to this point.  I didn't...so I had a little extra scrambling to do.  The key is to get everything lined up and get the tranny right up to the locating pins on the engine.  Then you can get a couple of bellhousing bolt started to maintain location while you get the nuts started one at a time on the torque converter studs, which will be sticking through holes on the flexplate if you have it all aligned properly.  Then you can put in the rest of the bellhousing bolts and pull everything together.  What I did next was to take the torque converter nuts off one at a time and put Loctite on them, then reinstall them and snug them down.  I spun the engine 3 times working the nuts from finger tight to wrench-tight to torqued.

When installing my bellhousing bolts I just happened to notice this vacuum port that was standing open.  This is where the vacuum modulator line to the C4 plugged in.  I had forgotten that I would need to plug it...but upon noticing this I got it taken care of well in advance of my first test session.  This whole monstrosity looks like a vacuum leak waiting to happen.  Maybe I'll take some time and clean it up someday.  It's a 3-way vacuum splitter, and I only need one vacuum line now (for the power brakes)...so the splitter isn't required.  Oh well.  For now I just stuck one of those vacuum plugs on it and let it go.

After getting the car running, I've noted it idles smoother than it did before.  It makes me wonder if I was losing some vacuum through the modulator circuit on the C4 before.


 

Project Overdrive Transmission Crossmember

Fabbing up something I couldn't buy:

OK.  Here's the bad news.  According to the experts an AOD conversion crossmember will not work.  The best I can determine is that the 4R70W is slightly longer than an AOD and that puts the transmission mount farther back.  In any case I talked to a few different makers of transmission crossmembers and no one had anything that would work with a 4R70W...So it was time to start fabricating.  The first thing I did was go to the steel yard and buy a couple of pieces of 1/8" wall steel tubing.  I needed about 2 feet of  1" X 3" rectangular tubing and 6 inches of 1 1/2" square tubing.

I went back to the barn and used my table saw to cut an old 2X4 down to exactly 1X3...the same size as my steel tubing.  Then I built myself a wood model of my proposal for a crossmember.

It was a lot easier to make changes in the wood than it would be later in the steel tubing.  This is the same thing made out of steel.  I have also added the 1 1/2" box tubing for a parking brake mount.  It is slotted like the original parking brake mount.

This is what it looks like with the parking brake hooked up.   I have the parking brake adjustment nut tightened all the way up here, and it's still not tight enough.  I considered cutting more treads on the parking brake adjustment rod, but upon close examination there is a taper past the factory threads that makes that impossible to do.  So, I've decided to use a very short piece of tubing (that will fit around the adjustment rod) as a spacer to hold the U-Bracket further forward, and take up slack in the back parking brake cables.  I used two 3/8" grade 8 bolts through the original mounting holes for the old transmission crossmember.  I wanted to add a third bolt over there on the right where you see that empty hole.  But my drill body was hitting the floor pan and I couldn't get in there to drill it.  Honestly, the thing is pretty tight the way it is.  Still, a third bolt would add some rigidity.

Here's some dimensions I wanted to record in case someone else wants to build one of these things.  There may be some car to car differences, so if I were you I'd tack weld this thing, clamp it in place under your car (or better yet bolt it to a properly oriented 4R70W via the transmission mount like I did), mark your hole locations by sticking a pencil through the mounting holes from the front, and cut the mounting holes as indicated.  I didn't leave any extra room in my mounting holes to allow for variation.  My bolts hold this thing pretty tight even without the nuts on.  Speaking of bolts those are Grade 8 bolts 3/8" diameter standard thread with hardened flat washers front and back and split ring lock washers under the nuts.  Also I was concerned about the risers filling up with water.  I packed my upper pieces with some of that expanding foam (that comes in a can) until there was only about 1/4" remaining to fill at the top after it had expanded and set up.  Then, I filled in the last 1/4" with 100% Silicon Caulking.  I had my bolts in place while doing this, so the holes would remain.

If you're wanting to make one of these for yourself...have at it.  If you want to make these to sell...come up with your own design.   This design belongs to me, although I'm SURE arrangements could me made ;-)

You may be able to see that I cut the ends of the horizontal tube at 45s, then I cut a 1" triangle out of the sides in 4 places, heated the base up and bent it up to seal the ends.  This is all welded solidly into place.  The really slick way to do this (and what I'll do if I ever make another one of these things) would be to leave enough steel on the bottom of the piece that you could cut out triangles, heat up the bottom, fold the base up on a 45 and pinch weld it to the top.  This would make the ends have a 45 on them, rather then the step you see on mine.  It would just look a bit nicer.

This is made out of .125 steel tubing I bought at a steel supply store.  If you need some of this stuff, salvage yards sometimes sell new tubing along with their old stuff.  Or, you might just want to check the yellow pages.  I bought 6 feet of the big stuff and 2 feet of the smaller square material.  That's enough to make 3.  My total material cost for one mount was around $10...but I already had some paint.  That's Eastwood chassis black over rustoleum brown primer.

On the emergency brake slots below (in the 1 1/2" tubing) look at your original crossmember's emergency brake bracket.  The slots I've indicated with a note will be obvious.


 
 

Project Overdrive Exhaust

How low can you go:
 

My car had a set of longtube headers on it that I bought used off the internet from some guy who had bought them used from someone else who had bought them used from someone else...all the way back into history.  I had more money in a set of good exhaust gaskets then I did in these headers.  So finding they weren't going to clear the transmission was no huge loss.  In fact, I'd managed to score a good deal on a set of JBA shorty headers off of Ebay which I wanted to install anyway.  In the picture below, the tranny still needs to come to port another 1/4"...and as you see that isn't going to happen with this header.


 

Once I figured out the headers wouldn't work, I had to take a deep breath.  Up until this point, everything I had done to the car was possible to fix.  I hadn't done anything that I couldn't undo.  If I proceed past this point, I was committed to seeing this project completely through to the end.  Looking around I realized how much time, effort, and money I had invested so far and thought about what it would mean to quit now.  I made up my find to go forward.  So, I crossed the Rubicon.  I sawsalled my 2-year old exhaust system out of the way aft of the H-pipe and jerked my no-name longtube headers.
 


 

This picture shows my JBA shorties on the engine.  I had to ding them a bit to get them off the shock towers.  There has been A TON of discussion about these headers on the Vintage Mustang Forum.  It would APPEAR that JBA changed these headers at some point to make them fit 65/66 mustangs better.  I got my set used from someone who said they tried to fit them on their '66 and couldn't get it done.  They weren't lying.  These are great headers as far as quality of material...but these absolutely didn't fit my car.  The Number 3 pipe was the worst.  I had to ding it enough I'm concerned I may have harmed the flow of the headers, but there wasn't anything else I could do.  I had to get them off the shock tower.  Well, I guess I could have taken a BFH to the shock tower...but that doesn't seem like it would be a very nice thing to do.  Hopefully JBA has these issues cured.

The other question I was never clear on was the motormounts.  JBA says a '65 must be changed to the '66 style mounts to use these.  Evidently the '66 mounts move your engine up.  In my case moving the engine up would not have fixed the interference on the shock towers.  I don't have much clearance above my 2" tall air cleaner as it is (about 3/8").  Also, the transmission doesn't have infinite clearance to the transmission tunnel.  I just don't know.  I worked mine over with an oxygen/acteylene torch and a hammer and blacksmithed them into a shape that cleared everything.  I also had to grind on the passenger side collector weld, because it was hitting the frame.  That pretty much ruined the headers nickel chrome coating, but that was OK.  I sent them off to JetHot to be coated inside and out.  As you can see below, the JetHot finish looks super, it keeps more heat in the headers which builds power and reduces underhood temperatures, and it's guaranteed for 3 years not to come back off.  They did charge me an extra $40 to take off my chrome coating (or what was left of it after I brutalized the headers).  I got some 1" Stage 8 locking bolts and found them to be just a hair too long.   7/8" would have been perfect.  I slipped some split ring lock washers under the heads to fix the length issue.  This also added another locking feature on top of the Stage 8 clips.

The ABSOLUTE BEST thing about the Stage 8 bolts is the hex they have cut in the heads so you can turn them with an allen wrench if you need to.  That really helps in installing these, because often there isn't room to get a socket on them.

I don't have any pictures of the exhaust hook up under the car.  It is pretty disappointing.  The exhaust shop could not figure out a way to get my h-pipe back in, AND the exhaust hangs extremely low around the transmission now.  The transmission pan is so wide it takes up a lot of room that the old pipes used to be in.  This is the exact same issue faced in an AOD conversion.  Although the AOD pan and the 4R70W are not interchangeable, they are both much wider and deeper than a C4 pan.  This would probably be an easier proposition on a coupe or fastback which doesn't have the convertible braces.  At this point I have driven the car over railroad tracks, humps, bumps, and lumps and it hasn't drug.  But it's low.  I'll try to get some pictures of this issue...and maybe even come up with some solutions.  I'm wondering if redesigning the transmission crossmember, or perhaps changing the bolt in convertible brace to something rigid but less intrusive might make it possible to get the exhaust up.  I'm even trying to learn about oval tubing...but I haven't found a vendor for that yet.  I guess I could make some of my own out of round tubing with a press of some sort.  I don't know.  What I've got now works...it just is not as good of exhaust system as I had before, and I never like to go backwards.
 

Project Overdrive Driveshaft

I need professional help:

I took the old driveshaft and the '98 driveshaft to a driveshaft shop.  They took the transmission yoke off the '98 driveshaft (that's all they used from it), cut down my original driveshaft to 50 1/2" centerline to centerline.  The replaced the u-joints front and back.  The front u-joint is a 1310 to 1330 conversion u-joint.  The back u-joint is a 1310.  They balanced it and gave it back to me with the transmission yoke already attached.  Total cost was $113.04 including tax.  Note that I determined the required length by mounting the yoke in the tranny once it was firmly bolted to the engine, with the yoke 1" out of the transmission.  Then I measured from the centerline of the u-joint hole to the flat on the clip mount on the rearend.  That is the normal way to measure for a driveshaft.


 
 

Project Overdrive electronics

If I only had a brain:
Below you can see the stock ashtray I acquired and used to mount my O/D cancel switch  and mode selector for the Baumann Transmission Control System (TCS).
I would have rather figured out a way to mount these switches in my gear shift itself, but that looked like it was beyond my ability...so I bought two very cute recessed switches to mount flush with the ashtray face...and couldn't use them.  The front of the ashtray is at a pretty good angle, and the flush mounted switches extended too far up and out of the ashtray.  So I got these surface mount switches from Radio Shack.  The Baumann TCS accepts a +12 input (or momentary contact if you prefer) to lock the tranny out of overdrive.  That's what the switch on the left does.  The TCS has an output to run to an indicator lamp, or LED (must use a ballast resistor with LED)...but I didn't use that.  I simply used these lighted toggles.  The TCS also accepts a +12V input that will switch the TCS to a secondary (user programmable) shifting strategy.  Just for yucks I call this the "hipo mode".  Does that mean my car is now a K-code?  I don't think so, Phil.
Here's another picture that shows the wiring coming out of the ashtray.  I used a cat5 cable that runs to a 9 pin serial port inside the ashtray.  That's plugged right into the 9 pin port on the back of the TCS.  This allows me to plug my laptop into the top of my ashtray, rather than trying to reach around behind the TCS, which is mounted inside the front compartment in my stock '65 long console.  I have a Deutch connector here that I'm using 4 pins on.  One is +12 when the key is on (from the 14 amp radio circuit, one is ground that ties into the TCS's main ground that terminates at the fenderwall near the battery, and 2 wires are outputs that hook go back to the TCS's 25 pin input harness.

 


While I'm talking about the TCS, I might as well put in a link and tie in Baumann's wiring diagram for this beast.  I became VERY familiar with this before I was done.  There's a 25 pin connector with that comes with the TCS.  The numbers on the left are that pin numbers that correspond with that plug.  The color codes relate (more or less) to Ford's standard wiring for their wiring harness that runs to the transmission.  Baumann suggests obtaining a Mustang GT harness, because it doesn't (evidently) include any extra wires.  My harness was from a '98 V6 Mustang and it included wires to 4 sensor sockets that were not used.  However, it was not hard to disassemble the harness and strip out the wiring for those sensors.  Be aware that each sensor includes a Grey wire with a red stripe (ground wire) that runs up the harness and is spiced to a single Gy/R wire.  You have to cut the sensors loose below the splice.  That wire hooks to pin 2 on the TCS as shown.  Speaking of ground...there is no black wire coming off the harness.  I don't care what it says next to 17 below.  The black wire they are referring to is the 17 Pin wire coming from the TCS which is black.  You end up hooking up 2 separate grounds Pin 2 and 17 (and in my case the ground from my ashtray) all hook to a single wire that you run out and hook to something substantial (I used my bottom monte carlo bar bolt) near the battery.  Pins 12 and 24 are tied together.  You should hook them to a ring connector and ground them to something solid AWAY from all other grounds.  Evidently the tranny's Solenoids kick out a lot of noise down that ground line which you don't want any part of with your other grounds.

You'll note some verbiage below about EEC.  Old mustangs don't have EEC's so this is just ignored.  This TCS is sometimes used by racer's with late model mustangs to give them additional control over their transmissions.  If a Baumann TCS is hooked up to an EEC equipped car it is smart enough to talk to it.  In my case (a standalone installation) I just ignored all EEC instructions.

For my positive connection, which hooks to pin 16, 13, the power feed going to my ashtray switches, and the red wire coming from the transmission harness.  These wires were brought to a 10 amp fusable link I picked up at the autoparts store.  I then split off two a large female bullet connector and a large male bullet connector.  The male plugs into the radio circuit coming from the switch.  The female plugs into the wire going to the radio itself.   So, the radio just plugs through and the fuse feeds everything else.

Remember, if your wiring is stock...the female connector will be the hot wire.


 

Take a look at the wire going to 12V in Run there on the right.  It says P/O or W/LB.  Well, I didn't have any wire like that coming off of my 1998 harness.  I did have one wire left over coming from pin 9 on the tranny's range connector socket.  It was orange.  A call to Baumann confirmed that the P/O or W/LB wire became ORANGE in later vehicles...so that wire ( along with the 3 other's shown there) get's connected back into your cars neutral safety switch wiring and backup light wiring via connectors in your engine bay (actually on the firewall near the brake booster).  The tranny's neutral safety switch is internal.

Depending upon the year of a Ford 4R70W, the hook up to the range sensor varies.  This sensor tells the computer which gear the transmission is in.  In older tranny's this was communicated via an analog voltage signal to the vehicle's computer.  In my 1998 transmission (and later ones) it is communicated digitally.  This means I had to consult the addendum to the wiring diagram above.  In any case, there are more wire's to hook up with the newer transmissions.  This is evidently a cleaner way to report gear position to the TCS and works a bit better.  The instructions with the TCS include the addendum that explain how to tell whether you need to use it or not.  Below are the additional wires that have to be hooked up with a newer TCS.  It's pretty straight forward.  With the later model transmission you have extra wires in the transmission wiring harness that hook as indicated to the TCS.  On an early stand alone installation LB/Y from the tranny's DTS hooks to pin 5.  With some type of other application it hooks to 6.  I'm sorry I can't tell you more.  After I figured out I just needed Pin 5...I guess I lost interest in Pin 6.

The VSS was also ignored in my case.  I didn't use the units "Manutronic" feature either, which allows you to use momentary inputs to manually shift up or down through the gears.  You racers out there might find that feature quite useful.  I'm picturing the ability to downshift coming into a turn without ever taking my hands off the wheel.  Are you as tired of reading about the wiring diagram as I am tired of writing about it???  Let's move on.  But just keep ONE thing in mind...Baumann's tech support is fantastic.  Their tech guy is Greg.  He knows this backwards and forwards and he has a 4R70W in his '66 mustang.  He didn't let me get lost.  If you take this project on, I'm betting he won't let you get lost either.

Let's talk a bit about mating the harness coming from the TCS and the harness coming from the transmission.  My instincts were to mate the two harnesses together completely with plugs for everything on the bench and NOT in the car.  That's the only way to do it.  There are a blue gazillion wires that have to be soldered.  It was hard enough to do on a work bench.  I can't imagine doing it all in the car.  I set up an small piece of plywood on two sawhorses to use as soldering table in my barn.  I should have use a 4x8 sheet.  Once you start putting this all together, and get your snips and wire cutters, and shrink tubing (of various sizes), and test leads and an ohm meter, and electrical tape, and a HOT soldering iron out, YOU NEED SOME ROOM.  Since I didn't have much room...I ended up setting my Baumann handbook on fire with the soldering pencil.  It was the first minor disaster in the project...but not the last.  (Did you catch that?  That's called "foreshadowing".  If I had set this swap in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi you'd have thought this was written by William Fricken Faulkner.)

The way I made my connections for the most part was to strip about 1/2" of wire on the wires to be connected, then I dropped a 1" piece of shrink tubing on one wire or the other.  Next I'd twist the two wires together end to end...so they were spliced.  I heated them up with my soldering pencil, hit them with a bit of rosin core solder, let them cool, slid the shrink wrap over the splice, and hit it with that butane grill lighter you see on the right below for a couple of seconds.  I'm sure all you electricians, electronic technicians, ham radio operators, and people who have some sort of clue about how this SHOULD be done...probably have a better way.  But that's how I did it and it worked for me.

If you NEVER want to drive your car EVER again...I'd suggest just twisting the wires together and hitting them with some electrical tape.  You'll be chasing shorts for the next 100 years.  There's just too many wires here.  You have to make sure every connection is made solidly and securely.  Eventually you have to cut a hole in your firewall or transmission tunnel and drag half of this through it.  If you've skimped on the bench work, you'll pay for it later...in spades.

When I was wandering around Autozone looking at wiring connectors, I spotted the little pigtail I'm holding in my hand.  I thought to myself "darn...the plugs on this thing look EXACTLY like the neutral safety switch plugs on my firewall."  The best $1.35 I ever spent.  The plugs on this 2-wire trailer connector ARE exactly the same as those in our old mustangs.  I clipped this one in two and used one plug for the 2 wires from the transmission to the backup lights and one plug for the 2 wires from the transmission to the neutral safety switch.  To figure out which plug was which on the car, I flipped the key on and looked for 12V+ with my voltmeter.  That one goes to the back up lights.

This is the source of all of our worries. The BAUMINATOR TCS.  It sure looks harmless.  I've customized mine here by making a couple of mounting brackets and screwing them to the endplates.  I screwed this down to the plastic floor inside the front compartment on my long console via some sheetmetal screws and some predrilled holes.

But before I did that, I got everything mocked up to see how it would fit.  Holy wiring harness Batman!

You can see Baumann's 25 pin unified cable there along with a piece of CAT 5 I'm using to tie the serial port into a remote port inside my ashtray.  The red wire hooked to the shifter screw is the remote solenoid ground.  I later drilled a hole through the carpet back up behind the corner of the console and screwed into the floorpan there with a sheet metal screw for my permanent connection.  If you look closely between the two connectors on the TCS, you can see a small LED.  That thing is a diagnostic tool.  It should come on green when the unit powers up on key-on.  When the car shifts to second it changes color to yellow.  When the car shifts to third it goes red.  In overdrive, it goes off.  That's really wonderful and everything, but my permanent mounting solution flips the TCS around so the wires and LED face forward and don't show when the console door is opened.  I've temporarily shoved some aluminum foil between unit and the firewall, which allows me to decipher what color the LED is shining by looking through the console door and seeing it's reflection in the crumpled aluminum foil.  An ideal solution?  Possibly not.

This shot shows the TPS plugged up...and I had to guess which wire went where.  The wiring diagram shows the coloring code for the wires coming from the transmission harness, but there really isn't any mention of which wire goes where.  If you get the parts I've shown, you'll note that the pigtail pins are labeled A, B, C.  Here is the way I hooked up my wires.  This is the correct hookup:

A -  Orange (closest to front of car in my setup.  Checks 5 volts with key on)
B -  Green  (center pin.  Variable output voltage when energized)
C -  Black  (closest to driver in my setup.  Ground)

I've got all 3 TPS wires spliced back into the wiring harness inside the convoluted tubing.  The ground wire splices to the main ground which is coming in from the firewall.  I did this by stripping an inch of insulation off the middle of the ground wire and wrapping the end of Wire "C" from the TPS to it.  Then I soldered it.  Then I wrapped it in electrical tape.  It's also protected by the tubing.  This meant one less wire had to go all the way back to the TCS.
 

OK.  This is painful.  I had to cut a 1 1/2" by 2" hole in my floor pan.  Why so big?  because the transmission connectors and all the wiring harness has to feed through it.  It's under the console...so it doesn't show.  But I know it's there.  And now you do too.

Would you think I was any less of a hack if you knew I made a grommet out of an old rubber floor mat and some sheetmetal screws to seal the hole?

I didn't think so ;-(

Later on after I had tested the TCS, I went ahead and put the console back in.  Here is that picture.  Note the aluminum foil.  Can you tell what color the LED is right now???  Since the car is parked...I'm guessing "green".

Do you remember my foreshawdowing of a future tragedy?  Well, it happened soon after the picture below was taken.  I had an appointment setup with my local exhaust shop to hook my exhaust back up.  I went out to the car the day of the appointment and it wouldn't start.  Why?  Because of the console installation!  When I put my console back in it was sitting in a slightly different spot.  That was OK with me, because it was sitting at a slight angle before that bugged me to no end.  When I drilled new mounting holes for the console in the floorpan, I managed to bullseye the car's fuel line with my 1/8" drill bit.  William Tell's got nothing on my marksmanship!  I couldn't do that again in a million-years if I tried.  I had to cut the fuel line in two where the hole was and clamp in a piece of hose.  Shoot.  Too bad the fuel line was only about a year old.

I made a shield to go behind the TCS and block off the view of all that wiring.  I bought a plastic "mirror repair panel" from the auto section of my local K-Mart, cut it down a bit so it would fit over the top of my wiring connecters on the back of the TCS, bent up some 1" stainless sheetmetal into a couple of clips to hold the mirror upright, and set it up behind the TCS.  This replaced the aluminum foil.   That's OK though.  As it turned out, I had a potato I wanted to bake anyway.

Here's a picture of the view of the TCS from the driver's seat with the console open and with it closed.  You'll note the green LED is easily visible in the mirror behind the TCS in the first picture, and the TCS is hidden from view in the second.   If one of you decides to do this swap, and figures out a way to get the switches mounted in the T-Handle of the shifter...I want pictures!  By the way, in my setup the switches (and lights) are normally off.  The OD light comes on if you have the OD locked out.   The HiPo light comes on if you have the secondary table selected.  For standard driving, neither light is energized.

    
 

Project Overdrive Software

Time to get with the Program:

First of all, if you made it to this point without going to Baumann's site, now might be a good time.  They have a bunch of great information about Ford Transmissions in general and the 4R70W in particular...as well as a good product description of their TCS.  That url is:

http://www.baumannengineering.com/tcs.htm

If you go over there you'll see a picture like this showing their pc based software that is used to program the TCS.

First off you may notice that this software we can use to program a vintage mustang, was written for vintage windows  (requires Win 3.1 and at least a 386-SX computer.  Well gee-whiz Grampa!!!)  There was some question as to whether it would run on a more modern flavor of Billy G's O/S.  I've run it on XP Pro with absolutely no problems.  Greg told me that some people have found it won't run on every Win 0/S out there.  XP pro added some functionality to emulate older versions of windows that I don't think exist in Win 98 for example.  It will run on Win95 per Greg at Baumann.  That's really all I know.  I got all hopped up to go over to ebay and buy a 8-year old laptop for $50...but then XP Pro ran the software fine so I just went with that.

The software is fairly basic.  You connect your lap top to the TCS with a serial cable (I made my own from some CAT5 and serial connectors I got at radio shack.  You connect straight across from Pin 1 male to Pin 1 female, Pin 2 male to Pin 2 female, etc.  Cat 5 only has 8 wires.  All 9 pins aren't used by the TCS)

Now if you've spent $400 for a TCS...you might want to go ahead and try to run the software and program the unit's non-volatile memory (no power is required to maintain programming) long before you get the thing mounted in your car.  Here's another little trick you may find useful.  Get a 25 Pin female connector and wire in a 9 volt battery to Pin 16 and Pin 17.  You can plug this into the TCS's 25 pin port and use it to power the TCS while you play around with it.  Notice how I taped the battery to the connector for that "special" look.  Custom labeling is courtesy of the Sharpie company.


To program the TCS, you power it up.  Hook up to your computer.  Fire up the software.  Set the specs you want on shift points, lock up, etc. for upshift and downshift.  Make sure you have the correct boxes checked for your type of transmission, etc.  Then you just hit the "write" button.  Your new data gets written over the top of your old data.  You can do this twice, once for the standard shift strategy and once for the secondary shifting strategy.  You don't have to start over each time either.  You can save your program to disk on the laptop.  You can also read the TCS before you start and then simply modify the existing program and write it back, rather than beginning from scratch each time.

Here you can see me hooked up to the serial port in the top of the ashtray (you can tell the ashtray is open there if you look real close, and there is a chrome DB9 connector sticking up out of it.  Cool huh?  Well, I'll tell you what wasn't cool.  I'll tell you what was downright embarrassing.  The TPS worked, but couldn't get over 4.5 volts by pushing the pedal to the floor.  Huh?  There ought to be a full 5.0 volts as soon as the TPS bottoms out and the actuator spring starts to stretch.  What gives?
 


 

It turns out the new underlayment, thick carpeting, and thick Pony floormats I installed during my interior restoration project added enough thickness to my flooring that the gas pedal wouldn't open the carb past about 85%!  Jeeze 'O Pete!  I wonder how much horsepower that was costing me.  The TPS made the problem obvious.  The throttle lever didn't have enough threads on it to completely fix this, so I took it off and cut another 10 threads in it with a threading die and used several of them as well to get the gas pedal higher off the floor, and achieve enough travel that the carb and the TPS would go to full open.  Once that occurred I got 5.0 volts at WOT...which is correct.

By the way, who snuck into my car and got all that dirt all over the floor mat there???  Oh wait.  That was me.

One thing that you really need to get right on your Baumann software is on the system setup screen.  It's called "base TPS voltage".  The base TPS voltage is the minimum voltage the TCS expects to see from the TPS and it needs to be something more than zero.  I had copied over the program that came with the Baumanator into my computer, and ended up having a problem because the base voltage setting was way to high.  What it amounted to was I had .25 volts at idle and the TCS had the base voltage set to .87 Volts.  What this meant is the TCS considered any throttle setting under .87 Volts to be idle.  How this manifested itself was an extremely hard 1-2 shift at low throttle settings.  If I took off nice and easy the TCS thought I was idling and didn't even consider shifting the transmission into second gear until the car ran into the "Manual 1-2" shift setting (also adjustable from the setup page).  The manual shifts are extremely hard.  It was obvious something wasn't right, and I fixed this after a couple of test drives.  In an ideal world it would have been set right BEFORE the first test drive.

Here's what I ended up with at idle.  I set my spring to lift the TPS slightly off of the low stop at idle.  This gives me a quarter volt you can see that 0.25 down there and that's what it means.  Then, I went to the Setup screen and clicked the "Set Base TPS at Idle Button" it picked a number a little lower to assign as the base TPS voltage (I think it was like 0.12 volts).  When I had my TPS all the way to the stop and clicked the same button, actually set the base TPS voltage higher than zero.  I think this must be a glitch in the software.  In actuality, I had been told to have the TPS partly advanced at idle, but I'd kind of forgotten about that until this issue came up.

The other thing I've done here is shift my upshift curve (the blue line) up so the car won't shift until 5800 RPM at full throttle.  I've saved that over to the secondary table (HiPo Mode).   That puts my 3-4 upshift at an impressive 144 miles an hour.  Do you think I can get there?  Yeee...I bet if I had a long enough stretch of track, I could give it a good shot.  Especially now that my carburetor opens up all the way!

Well, that's pretty much it for this project.  The 4R70W changes the character of the mustang completely.  It is a joy to go down the interstate now.  With my 2.80 rearend I'm only pulling about 1800 RPMs at 60.  My RPM's dropped more than I expected with this swap.  I think the lockup torque convertor has a lot to do with that.  My vintage C4 must have had a lot of slipage going on in it, because my RPMs dropped around 60% at highway speeds vs my old transmission.

The one thing that has me buffaloed completely right now is the torque converter lockup and disengage settings.  There are several settings that tell the t/c what to do...and I'm not clear what I want it to do.  I guess I'll have to call Greg again and ask him what the strategy is here and what the pitfalls associated with these settings are.  That's OK though, because I need to call him up and order one of those Baumann shift kits for this beast.  It'll go great with the 3.55 posi rear end I'm going to be putting into the '65 this winter.

Yes ladies and gentlemen...just like The Gospels, The Gulf Wars and Lay's Potato chips, just one isn't going to be enough.  Stay tuned for my next trip over the edge in:
 
 

Project Overdrive II
Coming Soon to the World Wide Web
(Or see it live in a small barn in Indiana.  Rated PG-13 for blood, violence and excessive use of the word "Fricken")