Trans swap basics

Ok not knowing if YOU are doing the work  (R&R of tranys) or if a shop will be doing all the work it will be hard to say what would be best for you but guessing seeing you had a shop do the other car’s trany going to say that is how you will go with this one?

The easiest and cheapest is to pull/rebuild the trany in the car now. You and the shop know it that all the parts are there now. If you go with a different trany say a late 727 you will need to get all the parts and what if something is not right like the rubber trany mount who will get the right part?

 

Now I know you asked what will bolt up to your motor. Well any v8 trany from your year on up to the end of AMC will bolt to the motor. The issue is the flex plate to crank & converter to crank & flex.

I would not go with a 998 (small car v8 trany) and never a 904 (used with 6 cly) in your heavy car. To get a 72 on up to work you need a flex that will work with the converter & be balance for your motor, Thing is there are none. So you would need to get a flex for any v8 motor using a 727 and have it match balance to your 290 flex. With that out of the way you need to buy an adapter that makes it possible to use the 727 flex & converter with the 290 flat crank. This can be gotten from the AMC venders.

Now you need to come up with a 727, it can come from any 72 on up car and Jeeps from think 75 on. It will most likely need to be rebuilt so we start off at this point the same as the trany in your car and get it rebuilt. If you started off with a Jeep one you will need to come up with the output shaft & housing. Oh don’t forget the get yoke that will work with the 727 output shaft and may need to have your drive shaft mod to fit the car. You will need all the T.V. linkage (kick down) or buy a cable and figure a way to hook it up to the carb. I think you can use your trany cross member just need to get the right rubber mount to use. Don’t forget the speedo cable going to need to get one made custom to work as I don’t know if the one you have will work or not.

 

As you can see a lot more to it than just bolt up a trany and go unless it is the one from the car.

Dave ----

xedge4lifex wrote: ... " just throw a t-5 in it" or "350 turbo" has come up multiple times...

Likely from people who A: have never done it, or B: do this day in/day out for a living. My guess is it's "A".

It's not really difficult to do a 727, Turbo350, or a T5 swap. If you dig through some of the posts in this section or Member's Projects section, you will find a few threads. However, any swap will involve some fabrication. You need the right crossmember mounting point, speedo cable, kickdown linkage, torque converter and bell housing mounts... So it's not exactly straight forward either.

If you really want something more modern, a Turbo350 is about the same vintage as a BW auto. (BTW, the Ford FMX is a continuation of the BW auto design, so it has many similarities, but some differences as well).  A 200R4 or 700R4 would give you overdrive and there are adapters available to bolt one to your 290. However, you would still need to deal with the speedo cable, kickdown cable, rear mount, drive shaft, and possibly mod'ing the trans tunnel for extra clearance needed for the overdrive unit. Newer still would be the electronic automatics, but then you're also messing with the control unit as well.

If you want to go stick, a T-10 would be a fairly straight forward swap since the factory parts are out there. Anything else would mean the same sort of issues as the auto swaps.

If you're not good with fabrication, the simplest and cheapest solution would be to rebuild the trans you already have. If you don't mind doing the extra work required for a swap, then you need to do some reading first and decide which way to go.

Shift Command is a marketing name. What you will have is a Borg-Warner Model 40 for a 290 2V or a Model 11 for a 290 4V. There should be an ID tag on the left (driver's) side of the trans.

As I said previously, these transmissions are similar to the Ford FMX, but not exactly the same. I have read that rebuild kits for the FMX will have only some of the parts needed to rebuild the BW. Since these transmissions have not been produced for a few decades, parts don't just drop out of the sky. Volvo and Jaguar also used them around the same time as AMC.

You could try an ad in Wanted section. It's a long shot, but someone might have a trans ready to go.