hello from oregon

With a 20r, 35s, 4speed and stock gears i can believe it can cruse at 70mph on the flats. But hauling on I5 going to the dunes you will be struggling. It does however look like a very well kept 80. 4.88s will help, don't expect a huge change tho. even 5.29s you'll be working up all those hills

Good luck

How hard was it to put the w56 in?

How hard was it to put the w56 in?

the w56 bolts right up to the engine. the crossmember needs to be moved back a few inches this can be done easily with u bolts over the frame or buy a HD crossmember from budbuilt he makes one for this swap.the hang up is you will need new drive lines.your truck appears to be a long bed so i believe you can use stock shafts from a 84-88 long bed truck. those shafts will also be a good upgrade compared to the weaker 79-83 shafts. so yeah the swap is super simple.

I couldnt use the stock 20r transfer case thats on it though could I?

yes i believe you can, some of the real old cases had a wierd extra spline thing going on, if youve got one of those it can still be used. you just have to grind down that little bit of spline. the info on that should be easy to track down. youll want to make sure to get a top shift w56. do you have any interest in dual cases?

i dont know the pros and cons of the different years of w56, u would probably want to talk to the guys at marlin about that. there all good and there probably equal when marlins done with em. the most important thing in my mind is do you want top shift or forward shift. to use your case youll want top shift

All the W series would work just fine.  IIRC the W56C had the metal bearing retaining plate, vs aluminum. 

I've seen that truck on CL.  If I had $$ I'd get it.   And as for the 70 mph on the hwy, you can thank the Weber for that.  I loved my Weber in my old Nissan.  Kick ass power on the hwy.  And great MPG too!

I used the gear speed calculator that I made. It is on the forum here somewhere if you do a search. I worked up two scenarios for you so you could compare them. The first one is with the 4 speed transmission and 4.88 gears. The second is with a W56 and 5.29's. The numbers under RPM are wheel RPM at a given engine RPM next to them is the vehicle speed. Hope this helps. Seems like a great deal on of the cleanest first gens around.



So you can see in the first scenario at 70 mph you would be in fourth gear your engine would be at about 3200 RPM. In the second scenario in 5th gear your engine would be turning at 3000 RPM or if you shifted down into 4th your engine would go up to 3500 RPM. Just depends on where your powerband and maximum efficiency is.

how hard is it to install the FROR crossmember? im looking to do a G series trans swap.

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