For those with experience with brownies(Not nescessarily in an IDI) How big a project

[Diesel JD]

....Is the install? Lets assume I have all the yokes, driveshafts and linkages I need and access to a mechanic's shop, no lift but plenty of transmission jacks and such to safely support the transmission and give me room to work under. My mechanic friend would also help if I got into a jam but I'd want to use as little of his time as possible just cause I want to do as much as possible myself, to keep costs down, and because he's usually got plenty of other better paying gigs going on so I don't want to waste his time. Looks pretty straight forward and if I do this I will have something else to drive for a few days or more in case it goes weird but I don't want it to be down weeks or months. Is this something I could accomplish within a week or two if I worked on it every evening for a few hours or should it not be that big a deal? Also would everyone be comfortable having the brownie hanging from the cross member and a couple appropriately sized bolts/nuts/mounts or should I plan on a lot of additional support. If so...what? Thanks guys.

 

[RLDSL]

First off, you don't need a big shop or lift, four of those drive up Rhino ramps work very nicely though. You will need a tranny jack, no way around that.A floor jack with an add on tranny cradle will work.
I welded up a little sub frame crossmember front and rear of teh thing each crossmember is supported by one large grade 8 bolt through the frame on each side, the crossmember rests on top of the main frame rails so once it all ties in together it's not going anywhere. The final position where the tranny mounts to teh crossmember is isolated by rubber mounts and stacks of washers that are adjustable for height so I could adjust the angle of teh box for ujoint angle ( which came in VERY handyfor fine tuning a vibration )

I'm the king of overkill, but when I looked at what the factory used for mounting the thing, it was easy to back off on running a bunch of extra supports, it's just not needed. JUst look at teh flimsy hunk of tin that holds your factory box on A normal healthy person should be able to do it in a week, heck , I'm half crippled and I did it in about 3, and I can't just crawl out from under the truck any time I want to like you young guys, it's a ten to fifteen minute ordeal sometimes just to get up

 

[Agnem]

My experience with Brownies tells me that the more butter you use, the better they taste. My wife makes great ones!





Sorry... couldn't resist.

 

[icanfixall]

Bacon... Butter and biscuits...... Nutten better than that.... Mel, you devil..... Anyway.... I saw and helped Robert with a linkage issue on his rig last summer when he was out here on thw west coast. He did a fine job of installing the Brownie in his rig. He now has 15 forward gear choices and three choices in reverse too... Ya can't have too many gear choices when towing heavy....

 

[Compu Doc]

My experience with Brownies tells me that the more butter you use, the better they taste. My wife makes great ones!





Sorry... couldn't resist.

And some people use a secret ingredient to make them taste really good

Although I have to admit I have never had brownies with the secret ingredient

 

[Diesel JD]

Hey thanks guys. Robert do you happen to know the part # for the rubber isolator mounts? I saw the stack of washers that came with this one and I thought that was curious to say the least but it didn't look like there was any rubber in there at all. I also notice on your box you have companion flanges where it bolts to the drive shaft. Is there any reason that you have to have these instead of normal bolt on or slip yokes like the factory boxes all seem to have? Lastly I know you've said that the shift linkages are the worst part of the install and I've also seen that you have had a few problems with them jamming on you. Any idea why this is happening or if you had it to do again would you do anything different with them? Thanks in advance.