Fox T-Bird/Cougar Forums  

what are the weights of the 4 different tannys we are talking about?
c4,c5,c6,t5?

Neat :D . Any idea how much they cost now?

AOD all the way... Been beating on a 3.8 SC version for 7+ years... Other than a Trans-Go shift kit and hardened shaft, it's stock(never apart)... Yea it's due for a freshening up, but I been saying that for three years...


If you drive the car any distance there's no decision, AOD...

My AOD has 9+ years 60K+ and then some on stock internals with a TransGo and hardened input shaft.

What's the Loss?

When we began to contemplate flywheel horsepower figures for our different combinations, we bantered about some concepts that can be deceiving.  Most enthusiasts have been exposed to the idea that flywheel and rear-wheel horsepower can be equated by factoring in a given percentage for drivetrain loss - the drag that occurs from all the items between the flywheel and the rear tires.  You may have seen factors such as 15 percent for stick-shift cars and 25 percent for automatics, applied by dividing rear-wheel horsepower by either 0.85 for stick-shifts or 0.75 for automatics.

Now take a time-out and consider the following.  Our original baseline indicated 195 hp at the rear wheels, which when divided by 0.85 equates to 229 flywheel horsepower, and implies that the drivetrain is absorbing some 34 horsepower.  On the other hand, our combination of blower and traditional bolt-ons netted nearly 340 hp on the Blood Enterprises dyno, which when divided by 0.85, equates to 400 flywheel horses, and implication that the drivetrain is now absorbing 60 hp.

Nothing has changed between the flywheel and the rear wheels on our '93 LX, so does it make sense to figure the drivetrain is now absorbing nearly twice as much power?  Such a concept just doesn't jibe in our little brains, so we asked a couple of people in the biz what they thought.  Lee Bender of C&L Performance and Paul Svinicki of Paul's High Performance are both well versed in evaluating Mustangs on the dyno, and they both agreed that extrapolating drivertrain horsepower loss via percentages is flawed.  Lee believes that the stick Mustangs experience roughly a 35hp loss through the drivetrain, whether they make 200 hp or 400 hp.  He did explain that ultra-high-powered vehicles - typically race cars - can be and exception to this rule, but that's a topic for another time.  Interestingly, a 35hp loss for stick-shifted drivetrains is strikingly similar to the difference between Ford's horsepower ratings and the rear-wheel numbers we've observed on dynos across the nation.  Hmmm...

do ant of you guys have a tranns brake? im thinking about buying a tranny with a tranns brake to give me better launches

do ant of you guys have a tranns brake? im thinking about buying a tranny with a tranns brake to give me better launches