Hey guys and gals, I'm brand new here and need your help. My brother has an 89 Broncos with the 2.9L in it. It started life as a 4X4 stick truck. The previous owner burned up the stick tranny, and put in a 2wd auto tranny in it. But when my brother bought it the auto was on it's last leg. So we decided to track down a 4X4 stick tranny and bring it back to stock.

Evidently the 2.9L with a 4X4 stick is a rare beast around the st louis area. Lol. But We now have the tranny and transfer case. We're running into a snag when we are trying to mate up the motor and trans.

We know that we have the input shaft mated with the flywheel and the clutch plate. But as we try to align it and bring the two together the tranny is a good 1/2 inch to 1 inch away from the motor.and it won't go any closer. It's acting like somthing is in the way. We can get bolts into the motor and try to walk it in but it still acts like something is definitely in the way.

So we made sure to stop before we broke anything. We pulled the tranny back off to see if we couls figure out what is going on. We can't see what the problem is. Any suggestions? We're there different sized input shafts maybe between years or something?

It's the only thing that i can think of that might be hitting that far out.

Thanks for any help you can throw our way.

 

Welcome to the forum

You should be using an M5OD-R1, 4x4 transmission from a 4.0l engine, the original FM146 trans didn't last long, which is why previous owner got rid of it
The 2.8l, 2.9l and 4.0l Ranger V6 engines all use same bellhousing bolt pattern
And input shaft sizes are all the same

You use the flywheel and clutch for the transmission model, not engine model

You need a tool/insert to line up clutch disc and pilot bearing when you bolt pressure plate to flywheel, so input shaft will slide in all the way and into pilot bearing hole
Always open the bleeder valve on slave when installing manual trans



Install guide here for FM146 to M5OD-R1 swap: https://therangerstation.com/Magazin..._to_M5OD.shtml

 

Yeah, the Fm146 is the one we have. As far as we knew the tranny bolt patterns were motor specific. This is great news that we can look for other motor combos to get a good trans from. Ironically I'm pretty sure tgat we passed up a couple 4.0L ones because we didn't think they would work for us.

 

The 2.8l, 2.9l and 4.0l used the same block so they had the same pattern, which IS engine specific, its just that these are the same basic engine, like Fords 289, 302, and 351 small block V8s use the same pattern

FM146 will work, so not sure why it won't go on

If you do use 4.0l M5R1 4x4 trans then you should also use 4.0l 10" flywheel and clutch, also 4.0l starter motor

The 1983-2011 Rangers all used the 1350 or 1354 transfer cases, either will bolt to any model Ranger 4x4 transmission, front and rear axle hook ups did change over the years so you have to match those up by year of axle and transfer case year