[macx]

Rebuilding my AOD, have gotten to the
point where I need to set the clearance
on the intermediate clutch (changed to
a 4 plate 4R70W clutch) and all my
manuals tell me is to use the little Ford
gauge bar with a depth mike. I have made a similar gauge, but need to know the thickness of the Ford gauge/bar in order to make the correct dimension adjustment and set the correct clearance.

That little piece of info seems to be the United States' best kept secret, unless one is willing to spend nearly $100 for a small, 8" long square piece of metal with a couple holes in it.

Thanks and kudos to anyone that knows FOR SURE - I know ABOUT what it should be from making an H gauge to set my end play and comparing to the specs, but ABOUT doesn't feed this bulldog.

[bleubyu2]

I wish I knew the "exact" answer but perhaps Baumann Engineering at baumannengineering.com may have the answer. In cruising their site they seemed knowledgeable about 4R70W mods to the AOD trans. I am in the very early stages of what you are going thru as well ( have a slipping AOD in a 90 fs bronce meself) and would be interested in the outcome. Any other mods you are making or have made?

[macx]

Matter of fact, I thought of contacting
Baumann after I posted this - had bought
some stuff from them when I rebuilt my
AOD several years ago.

They were kind enuf to tell me it's
.070 thick. When I compensated for
the different thickness of the one I made,
the specs out of the manual fell right
into place.

When I first rebuilt mine, an 89 with the
cast direct drum, I went to a later stamped steel drum and an 8 pack Alto Red / Kolene steel direct drum, put in
a Baumann shift kit, the A OD servo, a heavy duty OD band from Carr (couldn't afford the wide ratio kit with the wide band), a Sonnax accumulator valve for
the valve body, and a Carr 2250 (with the stock 302 HO) lockup converter.

It worked really well until the pump
went out just as I was going out the driveway on the first road test of my new warmed up 351 Lightning, and the
bushings and frictions followed before
I could get it back to the garage.

This time I also added a 4 plate intermed clutch by picking up a used
thinner intermed pressure plate from a local independen t rebuilder (where I also got a good used pump & stator supt assy MUCH cheaper than new), along with one extra pair of friction & steel plates.

I built an H gauge with which I was able to pretty accurately determine and set the end play for the plastic thrust washer. I made a 1" nominal square tube measuring bar with holes in it, similar to the measuring bar shown in the manuals, to measure intermed clutch clearance. After I found out the ford tool is .700, I was able tosubtract the extra thickness of mine from the .700 dimension and figure out my clearance. Then it was just a matter of putting in the right thickness steels and the specs fell right into place.

Awhile ago I did a write up on AODs, AOD/Es, and esp the 4R70W using info from the www.tccoa.com website tech articles, from Baumann's site, and from a number of other sources including a little of my own rebuild experience. It's posted on www.lincolnsonline.com, in their tech / transmission articles, called something like Ford OD trans parts interchangeability.

Now that I got my H gauge and clearance tool made and figured out,
I'm going to add some info to that article.

Being I didn't take the clutch pack pistons out this time (the lip seals are VERY hard to get in without the $100 or so worth of seal installation tools) , I added an inline high efficiency / small micron filter (used a Mobil 1 "high efficiency" oil filter which filters much smaller particles than most common oil filters) in the return line to capture anything that didn't get cleaned out during this last rebuild. I'm going to post pics of that on that site soon, too.

I hope to have all that done and submitted to that forum within a week or so.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to email me at macxx1@excite.com

PS - that was a "pressure regulator boost valve" that you can now get from Baumann that I put in my AOD valve body
(Carr called it a "zero leak accumulator valve")

To correct a mis-statement in my last post, I didn't subtract the extra thickness of my bar from the .070 of the ford bar, I subtracted the extra thickness of my bar from the dimension I measured, which then equaled what I would have measured if I had the .070 thick bar.