Yet Another A440 to H55 Swap With Pics

[Mr Technical]

Don't worry Spook50, I think you'll still hit some roadblocks on your job that you can explain in detail. Speaking of which, I've got a lot of info to post.

 

[Mr Technical]

Component Pics

One of the things that I found frustrating while researching this project was the lack of clear definition of what parts were being used. Without defining that, it's difficult to know if the information is applicable. I'll try to post a lot of pics so the next poor sap can see if the parts I used match theirs.

Pic 1) New bell housing with the lower clutch cover resting on it. I have to ask Cam at IPOR what year this BH is off of. I'll post the answer here later in an edit. It's hard to see the other side, but this BH has a window for the clutch fork on both sides, but only the RH side has the button for the clutch fork to hang on. I've got the clutch fork boot and the cover for the LH side on order with IPOR.
Pic 2) The old and new (from 60) crossmembers side by side.
Pic 3) The old mounts (RH side). I'm going to leave them in place, and try to figure what else I could use them for. Seems smarter than cutting them off arbitrarily.

 

[Mr Technical]

Splitting the Drivetrain

I pulled all the bolts using a 3 foot long collection of 1/2" extensions, a swivel 17mm socket and an impact gun. There was just enough room to get the upper bolts out by fishing the extensions over the tranny. If you're doing this job, keep a few one or two inch extensions to the back of the series (against the impact gun). It makes it easier to fine tune the length in place rather that fishing it through once, and then having to remove and fish again if the length isn't just right.

Once I had the bolts out, I jockeyed the stand around until I could see a little bit of light, but not much. Turns out I had missed one bolt (top right, the one that's laying down in pic 2). BTW, the placement of the bolts in pic 2 approximates their positions on the truck. The bolt with the ground strap on it holds the starter in.

 

[Mr Technical]

A440F Outta There!

Once I got that one bolt taken care of, the trans slid right out. Man, that was a good feeling!

Here are some pics:

Pic 1) Note that the torque converter stays with the transmission. I've been told bad things happen if you leave it on the engine when you're splitting the two.

Pic 2) Still on the lift. FYI, that's not me in the pics, it's a friend who was lending a hand. Thanks Andy!

Pic 3) A440F and Transfer Case on the pallet, ready to be shipped to the new owner. Let me know if you're looking for one or the other. Maybe we can set something up.

 

[Mr Technical]

Next up is removing the flywheel since it's a different design from the manual (non-US) one. Once that came off, I found a spacer behind it (Pic 2). For those of you with stiff necks, the note says "Gos on first" so it looks like someone other than the factory worker has been in here. There are two spacers total. One on the face of the flywheel (see pic 3 of the last post) and this one. Both of them are removed before the H55 goes in.

Pic 3) The old mount plate and flywheel spacer(s) removed.

 

[Mr Technical]

Once the truck was ready for the H55, I started prepping the transmission for installation. Cam had hooked me up with a bell housing and the access shroud/cover that goes beneath it.

At some point in transit, one of the bolts sheared off in the bell housing, and was only sticking up above the mating surface by less than 1/8". (Pic 1, sorry it's blurry) I'm guessing it happened in transit since the bolt was bent and broken. If it was just corroded into place, the bolt remnant would still be straight.

I tried to get a hold on it with the old visegrips, but couldn't get a strong enough hold on the angled surface. I took a beefy center punch and drove it back to straight, which allowed just enough of it to stick above the surface that the visegrips could get a bite.

Pics 2 and 3 show most of the donor parts I'll be putting in.

EDIT
After replacing the clutch master and slave cylinders years later, it turns out that the clutch fork that I began with was apparently modified before it was sourced for me. Pic 3 shows the old fork, which has a plugged hole on the end of it. The new style shown in pic 4 has a hole through it which allows the pushrod length to be adjusted.

Now the clutch master, slave, push rod and fork are all from an ‘83 model truck, which greatly simplifies things.

 

[Mr Technical]

Next I put the bell housing in, and then cleaned off the surface rust on the clutch components using a red Scotchbrite roloc wheel. (I was out of the green ones, which would have worked better.)

Note that in Pic 1, the O2 sensor connector (yellow, lower left) has not been plugged into the gray connector (top left), but now's the perfect time to do that. It gets a little tight after the H55 is in.

 

[Mr Technical]

Flywheel Problem (wheres the puking smiley?)

Once all the parts were clean(er), I tried to put the new flywheel on. No go.

I grabbed the 6 bolts that came with the flywheel and threaded them all in by hand. Then I started to torque one of them to the final torque (75 foot lbs. I think) when I felt a pop and the bolt got a lot easier to turn.

I couldn't believe it. I thought I just bought myself a new crankshaft, or at the least would have to Heli-coil the stripped threads in the crankshaft flange.

I pulled the bolt out and was very happy to see that the bolt took all the punishment. Question was, what happened?

I got out my digital calipers and measured the bolt threads. 10mm. No surprise there. Then I measured the threads on one of the bolts that came out of my flywheel. Almost 11mm?!?

Obviously, I decided to use the bolts that came out of my original flywheel, but quickly found out that they didn't fit into the holes of the new flywheel.

A little time at the drill press with a 27/64" (.4219") drill bit opened the flywheel holes just enough for the correct bolts to go through.

Crisis narrowly averted.

In Pic 2 you can see the stripped threads on the RH bolt.

 

[Mr Technical]

Time to put the clutch together. I grabbed the clutch alignment tool and tried to put it through the clutch plate. Wouldn't go. The clutch plate splines look like involute gears, where the tool I had had square splines. After calling around for the right tool, I asked one of the techs at the shop if they had one.

Sure enough one of the guys had a 10 spline with the right shape. He said it was for a Ford. I tried it on the clutch plate and it worked great. Back to the truck.

I started to put everything back together and found out the pilot on the new tool was too big for the bore of the pilot bearing.

Unfortunately, I'm not working at home on this, otherwise I would have turned the pilot of the tool down to the right size on my lathe in about 5 minutes. As it was, I spent probably half an hour using a roloc disk in a die grinder to sand it down. Eventually, I got it to fit in the pilot bearing.

 

[John Smith]

47 ft. lb on the flywheel bolts and you won't shear them. Use red Loctite also. Test fit the pilot bearing onto the input shaft of the tranny to make sure it slides on easy before you install it into the crank. Unless money is tight I would install a new clutch disc, pressure plate and get the flywheel properly resurfaced. That clutch looks like it has some miles on it.

 

[Mr Technical]

Hi John,

I don't know if you're saying that the 47 ft/lbs is 'safe' or recommended. I arrived at 75 ft/lbs by referring to this thread:

https://forum.ih8mud.com/60-series-wagons/401624-real-time-help-needed-h55f-install.html


I know I've seen it elsewhere too, but haven't figured out where yet. I've also heard 47 ft/lbs, but that was on a FJ40. Anyone else care to weigh in?

I did test fit the pilot to tranny fit before installation, just forgot to mention it.

I used Blue Loctite 242, which doesn't need heat to remove like the Red 271 does. I would be worried about toasting the rear main seal if I had to heat up the flywheel in the future. I guess any Loctite is better than no Loctite. (Just never use black Loctite unless you want the bolt to not move ever again.)

Money wasn't tight, but time definitely is. I have it on good authority that the clutch has a lot of life left, but I will eventually replace the whole clutch system. Thanks for the comments!

 

[John Smith]

47ft lb. is the torque spec listed in the Haynes LC service manual for flywheel bolts on a 2F. My 60 series FSM lists 64ft lb. for a 3F engine drive plate to crankshaft. I would use the 64ft lb. for your application. I believe you are going to continue to shear your bolts if you torque them to 75ft lb.

 

[Mr Technical]

I've got some catching up to do posting more on the swap, so it'll be a little rapid fire till I'm caught up.

Here's a pic of the clutch fork and the throw out bearing (TOB) in place. I bought some retaining pins from IPOR, but they aren't in in this picture. They go into the fork top and bottom, and hold it to the TOB.

 

[Mr Technical]

Let the wiring begin

Now that I had the truck prepared, it was time to jump into the wiring. I trial fit the A440F harness into the H55/TC to make sure all the connecters matched up. You can also see the PRNDL switch and harness which will be tied into.

Pic 2 shows the connectors on the A440F harness, which I'll be modifying and reusing. From the top to the bottom, these will be called: 3 connector round, 2 connector round, triangle and square connectors

 

[Mr Technical]

Good Source for Wiring Info

When I was doing my research on the wiring, I came across this link:

https://forum.ih8mud.com/60-series-wagons/390589-out-semi-old-a440-h55-5.html Check out post #98.

The text is dead on, but I think some of the pics were a little misleading, specifically on what side of the connectors to cut. The way the pics show, you'd have to cut the harness if you ever remove the tranny in the future. I followed what the text said over anything else, and made the cuts on the transmission side of the harness(es) and it worked like a charm. This way, all of the connections can easily be unplugged. Here are some pics:

Pic 1 shows the round 3 connector from the PRNDL unit. (see last post). This connector is for the Neutral Safety Swich (NSS) override. It gets cut off of the PRNDL unit, and the 2 heavier gauge wires can be soldered together. If you connect longer wires to each of the thicker wires, you can run them to a secret kill switch so the truck won't start unless the switch is flipped. IPOR gave me a better idea however. You can take the brake switch from the original pedal bucket you pulled, and mount it in the new pedal bucket so you need to push the clutch in before you start. It's a great way to keep kids that know how to start an auto truck from going for a ride if they start the manual truck. I'm sure it would be no problem to mount the kill switch and the clutch pedal switch in series, so both have to be made to start.

The third smaller gauge wire in Pic 1 is one side of the reverse switch, and gets soldered to the tranny harness' yellow/red wire which USED TO connect to the AT temp sensor, but now plugs right into the reverse switch on the H55.

Pic 2 shows the PRNDL 2 wire connector referenced in the wiring link in the last post. First, it gets cut off of the PRNDL unit, leaving some wire to work with. The blue wire gets cut and soldered to the tranny harness' yellow/green wire which (again) USED TO connect to the AT temp sensor, but now plugs right into the reverse switch on the H55. The red wire in Pic 2 gets cut and insulated.

Pic 3 shows the transmission wiring harness. You can see that I've added the green extension wires to add a clutch switch in the future (for now, they're just tied together at the other end though). You can see that the thin wire is connected to yellow/red wire of the harness, and that the blue wire of the other connector is soldered to the yellow/green wire of the harness.

In Pic 3 it might look like the red wire is tied into the blue wire, but it's not. It might also look like the stubs of the yellow/red and yellow/green wires are electrically connected. They are not. I just cut them off cleanly, and used a single piece of shrinkwrap to hold them.

Again, no cuts/changes were made to the truck's harness, everything was done on the A440F's harness.

 

[Mr Technical]

H55 is in!

Finally, the wiring was done, except for the clutch safety switch which will be added later.

Next, I bolted the H55 up. It went in so easily, that I almost forgot to take a picture!

You can see how much clearance there was, but in this pic, the crossmember isn't in place yet so it will move a little bit. I also had to make a longer rear ground strap, which isn't shown in this pic.

 

[Mr Technical]

Time to fab the crossmember mounts

I had originally planned to use some 3" x 3" angle iron that I picked up at Lowes for all of the mounts, but once I had the tranny in place, I realized that the crossmember was too wide to bolt to a 3" leg. The holes on the RH side were more than 3" away from the frame.

I cut a couple of 7" long pieces of angle iron that had one leg approx 6" wide, and the other approx 4" wide. That gave me the right width for bolting to on the outside of the RH frame rail, and I used the 3" x 3" on the RH inside. On the left side, I put the larger angle iron on the inside, with the smaller on the outside.

Pic 1 shows the pieces in their general positions on the crossmember. The left of the picture is to the front of the truck.

On the far 3" piece, I docked the corner to clear the lines that are bolted to the inside of the RH frame rail. On the LH side's 3" piece, you can see where I notched it to still allow the exhaust mount to bolt up to the frame.

I hung the crossmember from the rubber transmission mount on the tranny, and rested the mounts I'd made on the crossmember so I could fiddle with the jackstand to get the height just right. I also put the front drive shaft in to make sure that there was no interference between it and the crossmember before it was welded.

A friend at the shop did the honor of MIG welding the brackets in place. Thanks Pete! I would have liked to do it on my own welder at home, but I wasn't at home.

Pic 3 shows how the LH outside mount fits with the exhaust bracket.

Once the mounts were welded in place, I used a transfer punch to mark the center of the mount holes, then drilled the mounts for the bolts. I woulld definitely do it this way again, even though it would have taken less time to drill the holes on the drillpress before the mounts were welded in. There's just too much room for error unless you do it this way IMO.
Finally, I removed the jackstand and checked that the transmission was setting at a good height. Looked good! I still need to paint the mounts to prevent them from rusting though.

 

[Rusty Pig]

Nice thread! Another option for the crossmember mounts is to buy new from Toyota. Outters PN 321-60090, Inners PN 322-60080. I just paid $30 a piece for them, not the most economical way to go but easy and nothing fits like factory.

 

[Gurr]

That sure is a good amount of silicone on that exhaust!

 

[Mr Technical]

Aw man, you got me Gurr! Earlier in the year when I bought my truck, it failed emissions. Took the cats out and found that they were completely empty. Couldn't even get the cat converter rate at the scrapyard! Went with two Magnaflow cats, but they were too long, and didn't have flanges. Chop-sawed the flanges off the old ones, and welded them to the new cats. Would have passed emissions the second time if not for a small leak. Tried to fix it with better gaskets, no go. By that time I was so sick of messing with it that I started flinging the silicon to be done with it. Good news is that it's worked great for several months now, and was much cheaper than OEM cats.