pretty excited, my hot rod is really coming together... I have a '57 chevy stepside and I'm now finishing off the drivetrain swap right. put in a 70's 454 BB with a turbo 400 3 speed w/tall lokar floor shifter. the stock rear end finally bit the dust as expected, so the 12-bolt hunt began... ...was planning on an easy open 70's rear end, but stumbled upon a 12-bolt '74 camaro 411 posi with maybe 30k miles on it, for a grand. anyways, I know the ratio is an improvement over the OE rear end I was running, but how do you think I'll like the new combo? anyone have this rear end w/similar set-up? should pair nice with everything up front? just wanted some input in the time being...looking forward to it AND the suspension overhaul while we're under it...eager to get back on the road.
You're not going to be passing by too many gas stations, but it should be a hoot to drive. Definitely not a highway friendly gear...........
I'm sorry...I've been looking for replacement drum components and was going after '74 camaro set-up as reference...it's a '70.
You'll smoke the tires easy for sure but you're gonna be in the 3200 rpm range at 65-70. My 70 chevelle with 343 gears and 396 was 2700 at 65 mph. Great town cruiser though. Have fun. Gonna have much converter in it?
and that's exactly what it does 80% of the time... I'll post up a thread when I wrap this stuff up and show her off.
Stout combo for sure. Ran similar BB, T400, 3.73 and it was best of both worlds. Gas was about 45 cents though...we're leanin' real hard on four bucks in these parts... But you can't put a price on fun-factor go for it!!
I have a 58 Apache and it came factory with 3.90 gears. Whne I went to the Camaro rear end I put 3.73s in it with an M-22 (yes I know it is for sure) rock-crusher. I still was hitting 3200 rpm at 65-70 with 275-60-15s on the truck. I changed over to a T-5 since I am running a mild 283 and it is much more driver friendly. I think you will be looking for some not so deep gears after driving it for a few months. Back in the late 70s, my 69 Chevelle (396/4 speed) had 4.11s new but someone had changed it to somewhere around 3.3 which made it much more fun to drive all the time. I have a 454 and the rock-crusher under the work bench in my shop and plan on putting it in my '51 GMC one of these days with a deep gear (3.7-3.9) but I don't plan on road driving it, just a lot of town cruising.
You got loads of low RPM big block power right? 3.55 is the gear your looking for. Get's out of its own way and the highway drone won't drive you insane.
What Chandler said! Acutually a 4L60E is the truth but the controller isn't Hamb friendly price wise for most of you geezers on limited incomes so ya gotta suffer with the cable adjustment bull shit. However when it's all happy ya can do block long burnouts and still hit the big road.
I had 4.56 gears in my 59 truck for a while behind the 396/th400, it was fun...the speed limit was 55 on the freeway back then, and it was still way too much gear for me. 3.54 was a nice change. But then when the speed limit went up to 75 that was still too much.
You could always put a really tall tire in the back to cut the gear down a bit. My off topic 41 chev truck has 3.90 gears but with 33 inch tall tires it is more like a 3.23 as compared to a 28 inch tall tire. It also is a 454 / th400 and has no problem spinning the rear tires.
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