Yes, you should get the car steering wheel along with the column. (Hence the one I'd linked earlier.) Takes maybe fifteen minutes to either splice the old truck connector onto the new column's wiring or to make an adapter harness if you don't want to mess with either the steering column or truck wiring. It really is easy; I have to go out to my truck anyway, so I'll go get some shots now.

 

If he uses the car steering wheel/column, he can simply swap the E4OD shifter/rod, etc from the truck column over and be done...


Simple as that...

The column tube is simple enough, IIRC, 2 bolts per "Cap"...and a couple things done and it's off....

Then simply put the stuff over on the car column, and then back into the truck..


He can worry about the horn later...




P.S-AOD trannies were last used in 1991 for F-150's.....Minnesotafisherman has a 1992, that was built in 1991, and has a AOD...A true oddball...

But jim's truck has the E4OD....

So again, simply dropping the truck column, and transferring the shifter tube, etc and the shifter to the car's column.....

 

E4OD OD button connector (just to prove that it's different and has one more wire than the AOD-E one):


Horn and cruise control wiring, the car column connector is gray and on the right, truck wiring connector is black and on the left.


As you can see, the two connectors aren't even vaguely compatible. The truck uses an IIRC 8 position rectangular connector and the car uses a 4 position square connector. The car connector:


The truck connector:


The adapter wiring was made by having the junkyard cut the Mercury Grand Marquis' harness two or three inches inboard (or on the car side) of the steering column connector. Then I cut the old truck steering column's connector two or three inches on the column side (NEVER CUT THE TRUCK SIDE HARNESS!) and soldered the two together according to wiring diagrams I found online. You could also splice them together using crimp connectors, if you don't want to solder - I've done so many projects where I put weird stuff in/on vehicles where it was never intended to go that soldering is second nature when I'm building stuff like this.

You could also cut the car connector off the car's steering column harness and splice the truck's connector onto it. I don't like doing that because if I ever have to replace the column wiring for some reason I can't just go grab another one at the junkyard and slap it in.

The airbag wiring and associated two pin connector. Thoughtfully kept separate from all the other wiring and sheathed in day-glo yellow. This doesn't connect to anything on the F-250 and F-350 - we don't have airbags! You can just leave this dangling or cut it, however you want.




Give me a few and I can find my notes on wiring it up.

 

You DO NOT have to transfer the shifter tube at ALL! The arm at the end, yes. The tube itself, NO. IT'S THE SAME SHIFTER TUBE RIGHT DOWN TO THE SAME PART NUMBER. Same gate at the end. Same shift lockout solenoid.

If you want to keep the truck's shift lever (the part you pull on and move in the cab), it's just held on by one easily tapped out pin. You can reuse it by carefully bending it back a bit (off the column so you don't wreck it) so that it will clear the steering wheel when you pull it towards you to select a gear. The car wheel is a little closer set to the dashboard than the truck one and if you don't bend the truck's lever you foul the wheel and can't shift into or out of park because the lever hits the wheel. You can also just take the button off the end of the truck's lever and stick it into the car's housing, it should swap in.

It's not just the horn wiring that you have to deal with. It's horn, cruise control and key detect that you'd need to adapt. All in one four pin connector.

PS - yes, they stopped the AODs in 91-92. They were replaced with the AOD-E as used in the cars. Not the E4OD. Specifically, truck configurations that had the AOD before got the AOD-E after the break point. Truck configurations that were available with the E4OD before still had the E4OD after. The F-150 continued to use the AOD-E and the later development the 4R70W for many, many years after this.

 

Okay, here's the wiring information. It is known correct for a 95 Mercury Grand Marquis column and a 95 F-350 PSD with E4OD. It should be correct for all 94.5-97 OBS F-250 and F-350s with E4OD and all 92-97 Panther columns, but check to make sure your wiring colors match up and that all else is correct before soldering things in. In fact, it should be correct for any 94-97 OBS F-trucks mounting the E4OD - just went and checked the wiring schematics.

Ford has a nasty habit of changing wire colors before and after a connector, as you can see from the pictures above. This information is given assuming you are building an adapter harness like I did (again, as described above).

Format: Truck connector color - function - car connector color
SMALL Black wire - key detect - Black with violet stripe
Yellow with light blue stripe - Power to horn/horn relay - Blue or light blue, no stripe
Light blue with black stripe - Signal to cruise control module - Light blue with black stripe
LARGE Black wire - +12V power - Dark Green with orange stripe.

 

I was meaning the tube/shifter part you described...

And yes, you're right on the wiring...Mine didn't have the Cruise, etc crap..

The cars recieved the AODE- in 1992, for the Crown Vics....

And the trucks, in 1992, were given the E4OD...SOME of the 1990/1991's were optioned with it, but very very few...



Overall, we're on the same page though..

 

Didn't mean to cause an arguement. Lol. I am awaiting funds to complete this job.

 

It's all cool...

 

Here's something we didn't cover. I found a 92 F150 non tilt non airbag column with tight bearings. Will it swap in, or do I need to modify anything? I read that 92-93 were different than 94-97 trucks? I think i understand that I will need to reuse my ignition switch (the box, not the cylinder). I am going to swap in my ignition cylinder anyway. Is it difficult to remove / install ignition switch? Don't want to waste ant cash.

 

Two screws for the ignition switch box. No issues there. I don't recall what the difference is between the early and late columns on the trucks.

That said, you may have that one with tight bearings have the bearings fail shortly - a common problem with salvaged truck columns.

 

Forgot to see if new 92 column has cruise control buttons. I can reuse my horn cover with the buttons, but will the contact ring be the same? Seems silly, but Id like to retain the cruise function even if no tilt. Im betting I can replace the back of the wheels contact ring to make it work.

 

A no-cruise wheel will have a different ring or clockspring assembly. You will have to swap the wheel and the entire clockspring assembly over to keep cruise control.

 

Read 3rd quote, please....

Please read the 3rd quote on this post....

 

Wes, im getting a F150 column from 92 to go in my 96. I think that is a different scenario than whatever year crown vic column. More apples/apples i thought. I just need to reuse my switch? I feel like i'm not getting this. I usually understand things better or quicker.

 

Going truck to truck, there's one other difference between early and late steering columns, and I can't recall what it is. I remember reading about it when researching my swap - and it's not the ignition switch that's the issue, as we already discussed that.

Going car to truck, you might as well swap the switch over anyway, as I said earlier.