[GB SISSON]

I thank you all for the encouragement I'm finding here. I have learned a lot in this process so far and will continue to do so as I bring this adventure to a conclusion. The accidental fit between these two bearing retainers is not just of great importance, it is in fact EVERYTHING. Unfortunately there are two common sizes of bearing retainer with the T5, and likely more. For now I will call the two I know about Ford and GM. Six weeks ago I mocked up a plate for adapting an NP 435 granny llow four speed from a ford truck onto our hogshead.. When it came to increasing the NP's bearing retainer 'snout' to accept our TOB assembly I picked up the retainer from the hogs head and tried to slide it over the snout. Wouldn't go over. I looked inside of the flange end and see a machined spiral for oil control. This spiral area was machined to be a tighter fit on the transmission shaft, in other words the short spiral area has a smaller I.D, than the reamainder of the piece. I then turned the Flathead bearing retainer around and introduced the other end onto the NP's snout, It was really tight but I see it looks promising. I then cleaned out the hardened grease and low and behold, with light twisting and tapping the two mated perfectly with the flanges at opposite ends. I then used a die grinder to shave out the spiral as I didn't have a boring bar for my lathe. This allowed me to twist the FH bearing retainer over the NP's until it's flange bottomed out on the heads of the four 5/16 cap screws holding it to the transmission. Now these two machined flanges were about 1/2" apart. At this point both flanges are indexed to each other by Borg Warner and their machinery. I knew I was onto something.If a person were using a T5 with the later 'Ford pattern' this would be 'all she wrote'.... Unfortunatly mine is a GM snout and slightly smaller. Now that machined spiral comes into play. It is just a bit loose, but nicely machined so a sleeve is in order. I put one wrap of electrical tape and the spiral wouldn't go. Blue masking tape yes. This is not a wear area, so a sleeve won't be subject to stress or wear. I see SKF makes a speedi sleeve that will tap on but they don't give the O.D so hopefully that should work. Honing the spiral should be easy if needed. My lathe came with a huge assortment of adjustable reamers and I have a sunnen hone that I inherited from a friend, but I bet it's gonna be close right from SKF.
This could be my longest post ever, but I will close with this final thought. That nicely round 'machined' center hole I made with my router using the t5's greasy bellhousing as a template, which btw was an excellent fit, was counter productive to this project. The unhindered mating of the two flanges is the only important thing here. The 1" aluminum spacer is just that... A spacer. All of the drilled holes involved on both sides are for clamping purposes only. Case in point, the NP's four bolts to it's BH were 3/8" bolts in 1/2" holes. Most of the FH holes have 1/16" clearance. My super tight 'counterbore' that fits the t5's flange OD so well fights me when drilling and threading my clamping bolt holes. It would have been better to just jigsaw the hole on the outside of my scribed line so it wouldn't impart side stress that can interfere with the excellent mating of the two critical parts. Another way to put that would be to say the 1" spacer plate needs room to move around a bit so that it's many drilled, and or tapped holes do not not interfere with the good alignment afforder by the two flanges. Once bolted up snug on the bench I can see drilling and inserting some dowel pins or a couple of threaded indexing bolts to insure against any shifting of plate under extreme conditions. Last week I googled 'making a plate for a T-5 to a flathead V8' and found that in a thread here at fordbarn on that subject, the late, great J Seerey had discovered the same thing ten years earlier, and was a strong advocate of this type of plate, so I won't call this my idea. You still awake?