I am switching from a muncie to a tremec 3550. I saw that fortes sells a bolt in crosmember for $125. I heard you can make one out of a automatic tranny crossmember, what are the details on this? thanks for any help. btw its a 69 camaro

if you have a welder and a little fabricating ability, it should be pretty obvious what needs to be done when you get the old tranny out and have it setting next to the new Tremac. i'd probably measure the angle of the output shaft of the original tranny before dropping it out, to make sure you don't have any issues with that down the road. then, just get the new tranny in there and hold it at the proper angle with a floorjack or something, and modify the original crossmember as needed. you might kill a day or a weekend on it, but then you could say you did it yourself.

The best and most ecomomical crossmember is a modified TH400.

You will need to cut off the tramsmission mount tab and reweld it to the opposite side. Mock up everything in the car to get the placement correct. It takes about an hour to do the whole thing.

This crossmember is by far the best and easiest method.

so the fortes crossmember is still junk? I thought they redesigned it? I am about to order a tko and was just wondering. I was reading some info on the swap from some stuff I printed off of here from a couple years ago - any updates or anything new I might need to know about?
thanks

I have a Tremec I bought from Fortes in 1998. I also bought their crossmember. It is a modified Turbo 400 crossmember, and they did a good job on mine. I don't have a welder or the other necessary tools to modify one, so for me it was worth the money.

Originally posted by jay web:
so the fortes crossmember is still junk? I thought they redesigned it? I am about to order a tko and was just wondering. I was reading some info on the swap from some stuff I printed off of here from a couple years ago - any updates or anything new I might need to know about?
thanks Hi Jay,
Forte's crossmember is not junk, it's a fine unit.
It's a 3/8" thick chunk of steel that is press-braked into the proper shape, machined, and a rear support lip is added on for rigidity/strength. Here's kind of a poor pic: http://www.5speedtransmissions.com/5spcrossmember.html

The TH400 is pretty easy to modify as novaderrik mentioned, and here's a more on this swap:
http://www.5speedtransmissions.com/3550_69_camaro.html. The 1st gen Camaros are pretty much the easist car to swap a TREMEC 5sp into.

Repo Man, this crossmember is totally different than what you bought in '98. ;)

BTW: I'm a distributor for Forte, and I offer a TC discount. I'd certainly welcome a chance at your business. graemlins/beers.gif

Mike,

mike -- no offense on the "junk" comment. I will definately be giving you a call soon. What sort of discount are we talking? Or should I just get in touch with you personally?
thanks, jay

I have the crossmember that Mike sells, and I'm very happy with it. It's NOT weak by any means!