C4 Transmission

I have a friend restoring a '65 convertible. He is putting a 289 or 302 V8 in the car. He wants to use the C4 from a 200-6cyl behind it. I told him it won't last long. I did the same thing years ago, and it lasted about 6 months before the guts came out of it. Am I right or wrong?  

i would have to look in a ford book that is deep in storage.. but as i recall.  the sixes used less clutch plates .. so one could swap what ever is different with a V8 model from the transmission hard parts store..

there are differences between... C4 transmissions... depending on the year...

67 to 69 units

70 units
71 up units..

there are also several great articles not only here in the 4 mustang and ford magazine site.. but also over in the truck sites..

one thing... is really important...
the manual lever /shift shaft through the side of the case.   is CAR MODEL SPECIFIC..    there are dozens of designs of them.. get it wrong.. when swapping transmissions..   it may not line up with the shifter rod perfectly..  or at all...

the cars prior to 68 or so.. also used a spring loaded steel cable to pull the kick down lever from the long rod on the bottom of the accelerator pedal ..

cars will operate without the kick down attached or hooked up.. but there will be NO passing gear without a hand on the shifter to pull it back a gear...


you can type C4 into the search window above.. and after selecting on the second search to select all the magazines.   and you look over all the corvette C4s.. you will find some great articles on the C4 transmission.. ..  

If the situation is that the car has a 200ci 6 with a C4 and you are transplanting in a 289 you should not have any trouble assuming the C4 is currently ok and the 289/302 is reasonably mild. The other assumption would be that you have an open differential and are not running very wide tires. What blows the tranny up is the shock of dumping a lot of power through it when you have a lot of traction. That is when things break. If you have the scenario I describe you will just have get a bunch of tire smoke instead of breaking things. I transplanted a 302 into a 6 cyl 68 and ran it for several years on the 6cyl C4. It even survived a year with a 351 before the frame rails rusted away. Your biggest issue will be the 6cyl drum brakes as they truely suck.  

He is considering a 302 crate motor, with more than stock horsepower. That's why I don't think it will last.  

Would also consider  doing a tranny swap to and AOD, there is many site that  have information on doing that as well  

i went looking for articles on the C4 transmission ...

http://www.mustangandfords.com/techarticles/drivetrain/mufp_0605_small_block_ford_performance_transmission/viewall.html


http://www.popularhotrodding.com/tech/0708phr_1970_ford_fairlane_c4_transmission/viewall.html


http://www.customclassictrucks.com/techarticles/0508cct_1970_ford_bronco_c4_transmission_rebuild/viewall.html


http://www.mustangmonthly.com/techarticles/mump_0908_how_to_build_a_better_c4_transmission/viewall.html

you will want to read and probably book mark these articles..

i searched through over 100 pages of C4 article titles..  thats a thousand articles..  

Depending on the year and style of course but they have different torque converters,different clutch paks different modulators, different bypass springs, different centrifugal governors and some have different starter locations. Six cylinder transmissions should not be used in a V8 application. That said , I am sure there are people that have used them.