3 speed ?'s

ok so i may sound odd with this one but im young and curious so bear with me...
Has there ever been a vertigate made for a three speed or would there be any from a 4 speed that would fit and just forget the extra lever for reverse? yes ive used the search here and found nothing btw..

 

why? Terrible shifter for street use!

 

yes there is, the hurst sincro-loc had a pin you could remove and it would be an in line shifter.

 

the gm saginaw and ford 3 speeds are dirt cheap to get a hold of and can take a pretty good thrashing, nice for putting behind something with stupid crazy torque when you don't have funds for a muncie rock-crusher or a built powerglide. I'd look into the dirt track shifters and set it up so when you mash the 2-3 lever it kicks it out of 1st. Better option is use 1st for the burnout and launch it in 2nd, then just worry about grabbing 3rd. they made 3 ratio sets for the saginaws so you can mix an match gearing reasonably easy, cant tell you much about the fords. if you dont have a torquey motor they're pretty miserable on the street.

 

I'm with KoolKat-57, those things are great for serious drag racing but a royal pain in the ass most of the time driving on the street. Great for a high Bubba factor but a pain when you almost have to stop and think what you are going to do next rather than having a natural smooth and natural motion with your shifts. They were made to bang gears and bang them hard and not really intended for normal drive away from the stoplight shifts.

 

so i pulled the actual tranny out of my burban the other day, got it on the floor and thought to myself that looks really damn close to bein the same length as a saginaw i had on the floor from another car... so i got out the tape mesurer and evrything seems the same except for two of the bell housing hole are threaded into the 3 speed insted of the bellhousing.. am i right that there the gm 341 trannys are the same as a muncie/saginaw in length?

 

Same length, different output spline. Be sure and measure the bellhousing center hole and compare to the throwout bearing collar on the Saginaw. There is an adapter ring IF there's a mis-match, but with the age of your truck, they "should" be the same. Butch/56sedandelivery.

 

yup, that's an easy swap, like he says check the splines on the driveshaft yoke, and also think about the parking brake (assuming you have one in the suburban), sometimes the cable is in the way of the shifter.

You can use bolts and nuts to hold the lower two trans ears onto the bellhousing. Having an offset box wrench helps when it's time to tighten them.