727 Transmission Removal And Installation Tips

If you read my journal, you’re no doubt aware that I’ve had the transmission in and out of this car way too many times for a person to remain sane.  I’m sure racers yank their crank.. I mean… tranny… more often then I do, but I bet they also don’t have to deal with stock components all over the stinking place.    Here’s how I did it as best I can remember:

  1. Put the car up in the air. Jack stands are a must. I had a lot of work going on when I did this, so I had all four corners raised. Put it up real good and high – even higher if you do like I did and buy/build an adapter for a conventional floor jack. The minimum height can be high enough to create problems if the car isn’t way up there… and how are you going to raise the car to help things when your only floor jack is stuck under the transmission? 
  2. Draining the ATF would help right about now unless you’re taking the transmission to a shop for diagnostics – they’re likely going to want to see what kind of crud and shavings are in the pan and see what condition the fluid is in.
  3. Loosen the fan shroud.  Yes, the fan shroud. You don’t have to loosen it if you don’t want to, but it helps when you’re tilting the engine down to not have to worry about binding the fan into the shroud. If your fan sits far enough back that this isn’t a problem, then don’t worry about it.  You don’t have to take it out… just remove the mounting screws so it can dangle.
  4. Pop the ground cable off of the battery.  This is so you don’t fry anything when you pop the starter loose.
  5. Pull  the transmission dipstick tube.
  6. Remove the driveshaft.
  7. Pop the kickdown out of the way. In my case, I have a Lokar cable mounted to the tailshaft so I had to pop the cable loose from the lever and remove it  from the tailshaft. You could also pop it loose from the carb (just slide the cable forward and it pops right off) and drop it from the throttle cable bracket. I preferred to remove it from the tailshaft because I didn’t want it dangling all over the place while I was trying to jockey this 200# gorilla into place. Also… where’d you hook the spring that’s on the kickdown lever? If you hooked it to anything but the transmission case, don’t forget to drop that, too.
  8. If you have a wiring connection to a neutral start switch, pop that loose. It would be wise if you have some antistatic foam that came with your PC or if you have any kind of other soft chunk of stuff to jam it on top of the neutral start switch so you don’t accidentally bust a prong off like I did.
  9. Drop the dust cover from the lower front of the transmission.
  10. Drop the speedo cable.
  11. Pull the starter bolts. If you’re like me and have full length headers, I left it sitting partially in there and let it “stay behind” sitting on the headers as I pulled the transmission away from it. If you don’t have pipes in the way, go ahead and drop it out of there completely.
  12. I also dropped my exhaust to get it out of the way. At the time I was reworking the exhaust anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal. If yours is like most Mopar exhaust systems, there’s no way to avoid dropping it.
  13. Now is a real good time to pull the torque converter loose.  Be sure to make an index mark on the flex plate and the converter because the fit together only one way and Murphy’s law says if you don’t mark it, you will have to redo it 3 times to get it right when you’re putting it back together.
  14. Put your transmission jack under the tranny and secure it. Get just enough pressure on the tranny to support it so you can remove the crossmember and shift linkage.
  15. My crossmember was held in pretty damn tight.  Air tools can really speed up things like this. The shift linkage should be a breeze.
  16. Now that you have the transmission weight supported by the jack, and you can lower it down enough to get a line of sight to the bell housing bolts.
  17. Now is when you want to put a bottle jack or a second floor jack under the oil pan with a big chunk of wood to protect the pan – this is to hold the engine up while the transmission comes out. 
  18. A really really long extension, a wiggle socket, and a short 9/16” socket are your best friends right now.  If you squiggle and wiggle around, all of the rear-facing bell housing bolts should be accessible.
  19. Once you have those babies yanked, it’s time to go back to a normal 5/8” wrench or socket and pull the front facing bolts that tap into the bell housing. You should now be ready for removal!
  20. Slowly pull back a little and check.  The starter should be eased out slightly, the torque converter should be easing away from the flex plate.  Pull back a bit more… since the transmission is angling down, you’ll need to pull back, ease it down a bit, pull back a bit more, etc….  Once clear of the engine, you can lower the whole mess and drag it out of there. Be careful if you have headers that you don’t get caught on the collector cans while you’re doing this – you may want to wrap them if you have a fancy coating to protect.

Reassembly is pretty much reverse order, but as I said in the journal, on my setup it’s like trying to build a castle out Jello where all the pieces have to be fitted together at the exact same time. You need to make sure as you push the transmission forward to have it square to the engine block in all three axes. If your setup is like mine you’ll also find yourself trying to juggle the starter into place as you pull the tranmission forward. Also, be sure again to avoid the collector cans as best you can if you have full length headers.

Something else to keep in mind: check the hub area in the crankshaft where the torque converter snout rides before you try to reassemble your Jello castle. While the flex plate will keep the converter centered, if yours is rusty like mine was, the converter will not be able to move front to back and you might end up with an installation problem like I had. Of course I also had a missing alignement pin in the block. If your hub area is rusty, I managed to clean mine up real nice using a Dremel Tool with its wire wheel attachment. When you’re done cleaning it, slather some grease in there like the manual says to.

And when you’re putting the 7/16” bolts in that go through the engine and thread into the bell housing of the 727??? Be kind. Don’t over do it on the torque or you’ll strip them out and have resort to a nut and bolt.

If I messed anything up on this list or you have some tips to add, send me mail and let me know!