Changing 3 speed transmission to fluid drive or regular clutch

[Tired iron]

Hey all,

I have meadowbrook with fluid drive in front of the 3 speed transmission.  My tranny was so bad it wasn't even worth rebuilding.  I found another tranny in great shape but it was set up for a conventional clutch, not fluid drive.

 

I searched this forum and others for answers to if and how to adapt my new transmission to accept a fluid drive. There were lots of opinions but not definite answers.

 

So, now that I have accomplished this task, I thought I'd mention it here on the forum for others in the future who might be trying to figure this out 

 

The input shaft on for the fd set up is quite a bit longer than for a regular clutch, this is due to the thickness of the fd torque converter. As is the front bearing retainer.  That's the bad news. The good news is that everything else in the  transmissions are the same. So, All you need to do is obtain the right input shaft and snout for your desired application. 

 

So in my situation all I had to do was take off the input shaft and bearing retainer from the old bad fluid drive tranny and put it on the new transmission. 

[MarcDeSoto]

Wow.  Never thought it would be that easy.  Good job!

[Tired iron]

Thanks. But, to be clear, changing the input shaft requires taking the transmission apart and dropping the layshaft and cluster gear.