I have a buddy in my neighborhood who has a Maverick too (but sadly has no time for forums) and I was talking to him about putting an AOD (as opposed to my C4) in my Mav. We discussed the advantages and disadvantages, namely reliability, amount of work, and cost. He told me about something he referred to as a "gear splitter": A device like a second transmission that "splits" the ratio of the transmission when engaged, giving you an overdrive gear. Has anyone ever heard of this? If so, where can I get one? It seems to me like it mounts right behind the tranny so I would need a custom shorter driveshaft, but it seems like a really cool idea to think about.
It's cool! the only downfall is the big price tag....you can also do a search on here about it. Plenty of talk of it, And IIRC Frank was running one once.
It is definitely very pricey, but it seems like an AOD swap is a hassle and a lot less strong than a C4. I have pretty low gears (I don't know what my diff ratio is at the moment) and I get terrible mileage on the freeway because of that, but I love the torque I get with it. So I will probably explore my options for a while till I can get a job when I'm 18 and then upgrade once I raise some money.
I'm doing a T5 swap, much cheaper and way funner. And will allow me to run 3.73's on the highway. The gearvendors would be nice with paddle shifters, but that's another $500 to the already huge price tag.
An AOD swap is easy, I don't know about them not being "Reliable" I've seen a lot of them go for years in service vans. I have one in my Mav, the only issue I've had, was with the guy that built it. 71gold, tried a Gear Vendors overdrive on his car, with very little luck.
The only time I've heard them not be reliable is in race cars, but Lets face it many of us don't have 400WHP+ cars. So they'll last fine, The one behind my old 460 took everything I threw at it.
I thought Frank loved his gear vendor... it was his trans that was giving him trouble? Here's a pic of his setup, the second one: http://mmb.maverick.to/showpost.php?p=794533&postcount=17
I like the idea of the Gear Vendors unit but it adds a lot of length to the trans. Wouldn't mind doing the AOD but I hate the idea of how the valve body works, L-D-OD. Where the heck is 2nd?
Gear Vendor worked great... C4 bellhousing was my problem... loved my AOD also... I'm liking my...700R4...now so far...
Curious about this one. Is it behind a Ford? I have seen adapters for the swap but they are very conservative on the amount of horse power it is to be used with. I thought about this just because the AOD seems like a half hearted attempt at making an overdrive trans (no way to manually hold second, cheesy lock up for the converter etc). I'd like to know more about your set up.
this 700R4 is behind my LS1 swap. I looked at the adapter and for a few bucks more I got the motor instead...
