does a th400 tranny bolt rite on 86 cutlass supreme without the need to to cut drive line?

Asked by Anthony Mar 07, 2012 at 02:52 PM about the 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme

Question type: Maintenance & Repair

my tranny went out a week ago on my 86 cutlass supreme,I have a th400 tranny all rebuilt as replacement,only lil problem is some people tell me i mite have to cut drive line to shorten it other tell me that i shouldnt have a problem with that....need some help its the only car i have to move around

4 Answers

205

well on my 79 cutlus i did have to resize the drive shaft they do have a long shaft trany and a short shaft and u will easaly be able to see what you have if you put a long shaft in where there was a short shaft you will have to get your drive shaft resized

18,225

Nothing a tape measure, and maybe a friend to help and 5 minutes under the car won't answer. I think you'll find the linkage is slightly different going to a 400, but I'm not sure. Re-sizing your drive line is not a big deal though. any decent machine shop can do it and it's not that expensive as I recall. Check out the crossmember situation while you're under there too. As always these projects become more complicated than planned, so the more research you do ahead of time, the better it will go when you do the change over.

20

all the info u got is good but i would be guessing what engine u have , because if u have an olds,buick or pontiac pay attention to the bell housing hopefully it came with an olds 307 or even an 3.8 buick and that 400 tranny your using is olds ,pontiac,buick or cadillac bellhousing and not a chevy only bellhousing and i'll tell why u will come across two problems only being able too put two bolts in and the most value info is the size of the transmission tail shaft splines chevy has two sizes large and small on olds, pontiac, buick and cadillac i only a large spline u may have 2004r overdrive transmission which has a small shaft and the bellhousing is a unicase which means it will fit any rear wheel drive grive gm yes cadillac as well and if the 400 trans has a large spline shaft u have too change the drive shaft yoke note the an easy way of getting the correct length driveshaft is to take both trannys starting with the originally mark the wear line on yoke only do this when car is not jack up or if tranny is out for accurate measurement after that take the 400 tranny line it up side by side make sure the front bellhousings are even use the measurement an apply it to the 400 tranny also make sure the yokes are the same length or close too each other not more than 1 1/2inch i hope this info was useful g/body for life iceman

2 people found this helpful.

Just installed 400 & 400 Chevy turbo had to use adapter for Art Carr trans short tail, stock, drive shaft bolts in with universal u- joints for trans yolk, u-joint from Napa offset size bearings.

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