Saginaw 4 speed build

[Cgoldhill]

Looking for a company that makes upgraded complete rebuild kits for the Saginaw 4 speed or a shop in the NJ/PA/DE area good with saginaws. I've done searching and found old threads but can't find an actual shop or online store.

Please dont tell me to trash it and go Muncie, it'll be cheaper and less of a headache to build the sagninaw and know its fresh than buy a Muncie and pay to rebuild it.

I liked my Saginaw and would like to do an R10 over drive conversion one day but right now this is the easiest plug and play option.

[frankslagoon]

If your gears and shafts or ok there are a few kits on ebay. This kit had all the bearings and seals and sycros. keep your eyes out for that sag. 3sp. O/d This is mine when I finished it.

[68c10airstream]

When i was looking in the late 80's for a used saginaw 4 speed i ran a want ad in the local paper and asked for 4 speeds out of vega wagons. They had a special very wide ratio, like a low gear of 3.08 reduction. Obviously 4th gear is direct 1 to 1 i believe on all old school 4 speeds. I had 3 return calls and bought all three and if memory serves the 73 had a heavy duty case with additional ribs. I stuffed this behind a 49 willy's pick up with a 69 350 10to 1 compression premium fuel 300 hp v8 and an advance adapter from the saginaw to the original t-18 transfer case

The transfer case had an improved intermediate gear with timken tapered roller bearings. I installed 3.50 ratio front/rear end, Front end was a scout 345 v8 with unique auto 4x4 locking front hubs that free-wheeled on coasting, or you could switch the hub and lock it in. Rear end was a 75 ford f150. Both were 5 on 5 bolt circle.

Anyway my point is the old saginaw was pretty tough, I floored that 300 hp many tires in the snow, pushed it pretty hard on bare pavement and never failed. Sold it to a friend and he hung a plow on it for 10 years until the cab mounts gave way and the cab dropped down and were rubbing on the trans shift levers.

I had to post the saginaw specs because i remember having a hot rod article on the saginaw and the vega wagon's had the lowest first gear. When the 3 saginaws arrived i used a magic marker on the input and output shaft. Struck a line, stuffed it in low gear and counted the turns to get the output shaft to turn one full turn. All 3 turned the input shaft just past 3 full turns.

If i could get rid of all of this old auto stuff in my head i could probably stuff some newer LS info in it's place. Good luck.