Drive line issues:
 

Gotta question. My 68 Chevelle wagon, 5.57 gears,350 trans, 327/245 horse,went with me to Irwindale for Summit last weekend. Third pass, the rear end failed. I got the car off the track OK, but about six teeth in a row failed on the ring gear. I put a spare set of 5.38's in it, car's together again, but Tony Janes wants me to pull the 350 out and check it for a bad sprag. Which sprag would have failed? The car seems to move in gear fine, I'm not sure if ring gear failure two feet off the line really would hurt it, but the trans comes out next weekend for a look(it leaks anyway, so we were going to reseal it),have any of you ever damaged a trans doing that? When I blew an engine at the end of first gear about two years ago, it rolled the sprag in the converter,which we had fixed, but that was a Powerglide. This three speed is kind of a different animal.Talking about animal, you should see this car leave!

Re: Drive line issues:
 

Hi Greg
I would recommend a call to Leo G. on the tranny stuff.
How did the 5.38 compare to the 5.57? Just curious.
Thx
DD:cool:

Re: Drive line issues:
 

You would want to check the Lo Roller clutch, that is part of a support that is splined into the case close to the gearsets. A nice upgrade is to replace the support and roller clutch with one from a late model 4L65-e .

Re: Drive line issues:
 

I haven't run the car with 5.38's yet. 5.57's are only 3-4 % lower, so I imagine putting radial tires on the car would compensate for 5.57-bias ply tires . I did run the car in the 1/8th with bias ply-5.57's and then put the radials on and picked up .05. Tony Janes owns the trans so it probably will go to someone like Leo.Meanwhile the Powerglide and converter go back in.