1970 Gear Change / Transmission Swap

[ecbert]

Ok, so I'm tired of going 55 mph on the freeway @ 3100 rpm in my medium duty and I wanted to keep it semi-original, so I did a bunch of searching as to the parts I may need.

I figured the best way would be to raise the gear ratio from my current 6.50:1 to some other factory available ratio. So, over the past year or so, I bought a higher geared third member and a Clark 280VO HD transmission to install.

The transmission is NOS and will need nothing, I rounded up the parking brake assembly for it and already found a used shifter assembly off eBay.

I will have to rebuild the third member, pictures of that are going to be coming as I do it.

Currently I just have the two parts shown and I have not torn anything out of my truck yet. The process of rebuilding and doing the swap is just starting, so here goes...