Are the speedometer sending units (mech vs electronic) interchangable on a t5? like can you put an electric speedo sending unit on a transmission origonally equiped with a mechanical?

 

Yes you can. You just can't go from from auto to T5. I changed my sender from cable to electric when I did my tranny swap.

 

Ditto that. I have a 91 T-5 in my 83 car, same swap only in reverse. One bolt: unbolt, rebolt. Done.

The speedo gears are different, obviously; you'll need to come up with the correct cable-type gear for your rear and tires, if your trans doesn't happen to have the right one already.

 

Let me get a little more spefic - I have an 87 NWC t-5 in my formula that is brokeded with an electric speedo (should be from what I have read). I am gettin a transmission from an 85 camaro. So it is one bolt and swap? not that my speedo is all that accurate but I would like it to work somewhat.

 

Yes. Assuming of course that you have, or obtain, the correct mechanical speedo gear for your gear and tires.

 

Okay..let me ask a dumb question.


How are the gears different between the electric speedo sender on the T5 and the mechanical sender?

Reason I ask, I JUST finished my 5 speed swap into my 85 IROC. The tranny installed was a '92.5 WC T5 ( Sue me, I'm just quoting the info given from decoding the tag # :P and of course, it had the electric speedo sender. I pulled the cable style sender from a spare V-6 T5 that a friend had in his garage. I then swapped the gear off the end of the electric sender onto the end of the cable sender and installed it....speedo works fine, albeit a few mph fast, since I have 3.23 gears and 275/40/17 tires and the tranny was geared for a 3.08 setup originally. ( Actually not that bad, ACTUAL speed is 95.5 percent of displayed speed. I can live with that... )

Should it not be working? The '92 rev GM parts catalog I have lists the same pt#'s on the same tooth gear regardless of electric or cable equipped speedos...

 

The gear that goes on the trans mainshaft, the "drive" gear, is in fact the same.

The cable-type driven gear however is a long thing with a shaft that goes all the way through the housing and has a square hole in the far end of it to accomodate a cable; the one for an electronic sender is just the gear teeth part of it, no shaft at all, just a D-shaped hole where it slips over the little shaft that sticks out of the sender.

I've never seen a 2-piece mechanical gear, where the gear tooth part is interchangeable and just slips onto either the shaft of a cable system, or the little D shaft of an electronic sender. Not that it couldn't easily be made that way, I've just never seen any such thing. That's a new one on me. I'd like to see a pic of that.

 

Maybe I'm confused?

Tranny in my car NOW ( with working speedo ) came out of a '92 Z28. It still had the factory electronic speedo / gear "thing" in the side of the trans. I simply took the one 10mm bolt, that holds it in, out and slid it out. I slid the gear off the end and swapped it onto the cable driven adapter that I took out of a spare V-6 T5 that my neighbor has...I then slid this into the tranny, installed the 10mm bolt, and away I went.


Did I miss something?

 

I don't know where the "missing is occurring... maybe on my end...

Here's a cable speedo gear housing, and an electric one. Unfortunately I couldn't find either kind of gear close to the top of the heap. In any case, the electronic one is just a little plastic gear about 1¼" in diameter, with a D-shaped hole that allows it to slide over that metal shaft sticking out of the sender. A cable one is usually exactly like that on the end, but also has a shaft about 3" long and 3/8" in diameter, that goes all the way through that housing, and has a square hole in the end of it for the cable to plug into.

In order to be able to use an electronic gear in a cable setup, you'd have to have a shaft of the correct length and diameter to go through the cable housing, and that had a D on the end to accept the gear. Perhaps there's a housing I've never seen that has that made into it, or something. I don't know.

 

DUH!!! Light bulb...

I wasn't thinking...maybe doing the T5 swap in one day wasn't helping.

I removed the gear from the electric sender and used it on the shaft that came inside the cable driven one I pulled out.

Make sense?



I'm REALLY confused now

Chris
Still like my 5 speed though...
And I lucked upon a World Class w/ the .63 5th :P

 

Hmm... I've never seen one like that.

That would be too easy. There's probably a law against it somewhere.