So a quick search didn't result in useful information.

Whats an easy way to determin whether my transmission is a Borg Warner or World Class T5? It doesn't seem obvious looking at it from below when the car is on a hoist.

Which one is better? Apparently there is a kit to make one of these trannys much stronger, is this true? And which tranny is it for?

 

Borg-Warner is a company. "World class" is a buzzword.

The T-5 is a model of transmission it produced for several years. Some time after the discontinuation of active production, the rights and all the IP to it were sold to Tremec, a transmission company in Mexico.

This transmission came in 2 versions. The early version was introduced in about 1982, and the 2nd design was introduced in about 1986. As you may recall if you were around at that time, in 1986, "Total Quality" was the management buzzword of the day; and if you read the "total quality" literature, you will find that "world class" product or service delivery is defined as "six sigma", or having fewer defects (failure to satisfy the customer) than 6 standard deviations (about 1 defect in 3 million satisfaction opportunities). Some nitwit at B-W, for some reason known only to God and the nitwit himself, decided to name the 2nd design of that transmission after that trendy 80s buzzword. And of course now, as happens with all "trendy" things, the underlying meaning of the trendy buzzword "world class" has long since been forgotten and supplanted by incantations of mystery and voodoo.

So, to answer your question, both designs of the T-5 were products of the Borg-Warner Corp. The 2nd design somehow got named after that hideous stupid trendy buzzword. The later design is slightly stronger; but mostly, it offers slightly improved gas mileage, because the intermediate gears run on needle roller bearings on the mainshaft when they're not engaged (so when it's in 5th for example, 1st, 2nd, & 3rd are just spinning around doing nothing, and they're on rollers instead of bushings, so they have less friction, and use up less power); but other than that, there's not a whole lot of difference between them. The shafts are the same diameter, they're spaced the same distance apart which means all the gears are the same diameter, ALOT of misc internal parts interchange but many do not.

I'm not going to speculate about "better".

I'm also not going to comment on the "kits". The weakest thing about the T-5 is the case; so unless the "kit" involves a new case, I'm more than a little skeptical as to whether it really accomplishes anything or not. Me, I got sick of tracking down cores and rebuilding them every few thousand miles; I have a whole HEAP of dead ones; I switched to a T-56 and put all that behind me.

 

ok thanks, that answers alot of questions, rumours, and buzz words.. and makes me look dumb in the process

 

Hey, not near as dumb as me!!

 

People have posted pictures before, but if you have a Timkin bearing on the front of the case, its a World Class. If not, its not. GM used the World Class T5 starting in 1988, so if the trans in your '88 IROC is stock, its a World Class.

 

G Force makes an upgrade kit for the t-5 that will make it capable of handling around 500 ft-lbs. Heres a link to their site. http://www.gforcetransmissions.com/tran_gt-5.asp

 

In other words, I wouldn't bother with it.

 

Go read the thread in the Aftermarket Product forum. They only rate their trans for 500 hp if you use a stock clutch and street tires and dont race it.

 

I've got a stock non-wc T5 that I rate at 600ftlbs if you don't drive it

that's about the same as what they have....

 

got a link to these pics. all t-5's that i have seen have a bearing in the front. timken is just a brand of bearing. as far as the front cluster shaft bearing goes, the main difference is the way they are installed and the way they are removed. the way i always go by is the way the bell housing mounts. of course there are a very few that are a non-wwrld class case with world class internals.

 

No, there are not. The 2 different types of bearings (staright roller with thrust washers, vs tapered rollers with preload) require totally different bores in the case.

Either a transmission is 1st design, or it's 2nd design. Period.



The one on the top is 1st design; the bottom one is 2nd design.

 

WC is significantly stronger than the Non-WC

 

No, it is not.

The shafts are the same diameter; they're the same distance apart, meaning the gears are the same diameter; all the hard parts are made of the same materials; the case is the same size, roughly the same thickness across the front where they're the weakest (between the clutch gear bearing and the countergear bearing); and so on.

The ONLY thing that's better about the 2nd design as far as strength, is the tapered roller bearing setup on the countergear, which holds it in place better than the thrust washer arrangement in the 1st design. There MIGHT MAYBE be a 10% difference in average strength before tearing them up. That's not really "significant".

 

never said the bearings weren't different, just that both had them. there is also a difference in the way the bell housing bolts to the case. w/c had one pattern, and non-w/c had a different pattern. as i said before, some with the non-w/c pattern had w/c internals. i have seen these at work and put them together.PERIOD.

 

Ummm, no. No way. The bearings are SO DIFFERENT, that the case cannot accommodate the kind that it's not.Ummmm, no. I have some of each sitting right here in front of me. As for example, the 2 in my pic. In fact, I took a 1st design out of my 83 car, and dropped a 91 2nd design right in its place. They are externally identical. Same deal with my little bor's S10... we poulled his 82 T-4 out, and slapped a later-model T-5 in; all we had to change in that case, was the shifter hole.

Now, the 2nd design ones used in 4th gen 6-cyl cars, and the 2nd design ones used in Frods, are not the same as the 1st design ones used behind Chevy V8s; but application for application, the 2 designs are IDENTICAL EXTERNALLY, as far as fit and bolting up.

 

WC can handle significantly more torque than the Non-WC

 

:sigh:

It just won't stop, will it....

I guess if enough people keep repeating it often enough, it will become true? Or, maybe 10% is now considered "significant"? Iunno.

"The Earth is flat
The Earth is flat
The Earth is flat
..."

OK, now the Earth is flat. Right?

About the only people who will make that claim with a straight face, are people who have NEVER looked inside one of those things; have NEVER had the 2 of them side by side; who have NEVER had enough torque to where they really have to worry about it (people with 305s and below); and whose primary source of "knowledge" is the McDonalds parking lot on Friday nights.

 

sofa....i'm not gonna argue with you on this and your backyard knowledge. i have a shop full of cores and two guys that have been building them for years to back me up. some of this stuff is like others saying that all 700r4's after '84 had 30 splines.

 

285 ft/lbs to 330 ft/lbs

significantly stronger sir


different bearings

different ratios

makes that 16% increase even more significant

 

No, not much point in arguing about 2nd design guts in a 1st design case. That's just WRONG, pure and simple. The 1st design case won't accommodate the preloaded tapered roller bearings; that being the cardinal difference between the 2 designs. The design change was, they modified the case. Original design case = 1st design; case modified for tapered roller bearings = 2nd design.

"The Earth is flat
The Earth is flat
The Earth is flat
The Earth is flat
..... "

Will somebody please check the latest images from the space shuttle and see if it's working yet?

Ratios are the same in the 2 designs; or that is to say, APPLICATION FOR APPLICATION, they CAN BE the same. The 2 in that pic right there both have 2.95 1st and .73 5th.

Both of those in the pic were behind a motor that put 373 ft-lbs to the wheels. That's around 425 - 430 at the crank. IMHO the difference between "rating" one at 285 and at 330 isn't significant; especially not when I had already destroyed about 3 or 4 of them behind the stock 305 that came in the car, before the other motor, with some actual torque, went in it and accelerated the process.

 

don't blame the WC T5 on your inability to correctly operate a motor vehicle.

and that doesn't mean you can't whomp on it either...it just means you need to press the clutch in when you shift and not drop the clutch at 3500rpms

who woulda thought things break when you don't use them right


p.s. the earth is flat

http://theflatearthsociety.org/forum...p?topic=1324.0

 

I'll have to plead "guilty as charged" to the driving comments....

When I bought a T-5 car at the time the T-5 hit the market in the early 80s, I hallucinated that it was a heavy-duty transmission, kind of like the 4-speeds I had been driving for years on end, including even the 4-speed Z-28 I traded in on it. Little did I know that you CAN'T treat one like that and expect it to survive. But I sure found out. I came to think of it like I had an egg connecting the engine to the drive shaft, and if I treated it like that (babied it), it would last alot longer. So yeah, I COULDN'T use it "right", in other words just like every "high-performance" manual transmission I'd ever had (in fact I had a thriving business in building 4-speeds going on at that time, made pretty good money at it), because it just isn't a "high-performance" transmission to begin with. It's a light-duty gas-mileage box.

 

Small block chevy V8's have the same bellhousing bolt pattern, so how can a transmission designed to bolt to a Chevy V8 have a different bolt pattern? Unless you have a 4th gen V6 T5 or a Ford T5 and are referring to that, maybe?

 

refers to how the transmission bolts to the bell housing....not bell to case.

 

I think we're all getting tired of this stupid crap that just somehow REFUSES to go away.

Please explain to us how the bolt pattern on the 1st design transmission on top, which was bolted to a BH out of an 84 Z28, is different from the one on the bottom, which is a 2nd design out of a 91 car, that was later bolted to the SAME BH.