[GB SISSON]

Thought I'd post my findings here as someone in the future may search this subject. Once again my buddy was correct when he said of me... "His epitaph certainly wont be 'He was a man of few words'"......
I came up with a ford type NP 435 the other day. 2wd type and the price was right and seller said it worked fine. I determined I needed a 3/4" thick adapter plate to bring the end of the pilot to the exact same spot off the truck hogshead. Pilots were identical in OD and length. For test purposes I made a 3/4" plywood spacer with a hole to fit the NP's bearing retainer flange. I got a snug fit on the flange and traced the 8 1/2" across and 6 5/16" vertical 'symetrical butterfly' pattern on my plywood. Drilled to 1/2" as the clearance holes were 7/16". Flipped the plywood, centered on flange center hole and traced again. Drilled them 1/2". All my pencil tracings were double checked with the known dimensions before drilling. The plywood was bolted onto the tranny with shouldered 8ba headbolts which were a perfect fit through the existing clearance holes . The top two nuts were so close to the NP's casting that no wrench needed as the flats were tight to the case, and the bottom through bolts were in the clear. Amazingly simple so far. Next I pulled the bearing retainer/TOB sleeve off of a t-9 crash box 4 speed. Just for yucks I decided to see if it would fit over the NP's snout as a sleeve.. Nope, too tight. I looked inside and there was a very shallow oil slinger type spiral like a shallow acme thread for the first 1/2" on the flange end. I turned it around and introduced it backwards. Both pieces were cold and had some old hard grease on them but it was encouraging. After cleaning them some, it slipped on but I had to wiggle and rotate to slide it on backwards until it bottomed out against the oil groove 'threads'.. More great news. I could not adapt a boring bar to my lathe so I used a drum sander on a drill just to bring down that last 1/2". Not only did it slide on with a perfect snug fit, but the flange bottomed out into it's original recess in the base of the hogshead. This took a couple taps with a brass hammer, which of course centered the whole works. With an extra washer under the cap screws holding the NP's bearing retainer it can be tapped home remaining flush as Henry intended. I can envision drilling and tapping a shared hole in that joint for a small brass hex head pipe plug to retain it. I may need to take about 3/16" off the end of this new 'sleeve', but other than that, and a steel or aluminum plate this should bolt directly into a flathead V8 with no complex machining. The center hole in the plate can now be oversized and the perfect fit between the two sleeves and flange will center it. Note: This part was easy, making a new crossmember for a half ton won't be that fun if you are working under vehicle. A tonner or larger, looks like some modification to existing crossmember.