Even if you find a 5 speed to do the swap, you will need a lot of
stuff! I did it once before and will never do it again.
You will need a new engine wiring harness, PCM, neutral safety switch,
pedals (duh!), clutch master cyl and slave cylinder, trans mount,
steering column, axle yoke, flywheel and exhaust manifolds. There is a
lot to do and it is not that easy.
Also - if you have tweaked the 318 cid at all, forget the 5 speed. The
NV3500 is a pile of junk if you try to put any type of horsepower and
torque to it. Already been there and done that with my 318 a couple
years ago (340 flywheel horsepower and around 400 ft lbs torque). Kept
jamming up the shaft in the transmission with too much torque. Went
through three NEW NV3500s with the same results. Ended up returning to
the automatic set up. If you can find it, the NV4500 is a much better
trans for this application and will be actually reliable in the long
run. This was normally found on the diesels and larger Rams.
If you really want a manual transmission for your truck, buy one with it
already installed and then start from there.
Jim H.
DACUDA
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Feb 06 2004 - 11:45:57 EST