Hey everybody,
For those of you interested in this swap, here's what happened over the past
two weeks. I finally put the transmission in the trunk of my car and hauled
it to the mechanic who works on my other cars (but doesn't do transmissions).
He didn't know what it was, but had a calendar that showed all the gaskets
for Chevy trannys. Turns out my transmission is a 400. I won't go into my
"friendly neighborhood Chevy dealer" who could only determine anything if you
knew the year and model of the car or truck it came out of (including any
type of bolts) or AAMCO. These people (in my particular location) were less
than useful.
When I bought the transmission, I also bought a Jennie shift kit, flex plate
and torque convertor, all for a 350. The flexplate is OK, and maybe the
torque convertor would have worked, but I didn't want to take it apart again,
so I bought a new converter. The shifter, of course had to be modified. My
brother, ace engineer that he is, modified the brackets and it works perfect.
For those of you who want to modify your Jennie 350 shifter so it works on a
400, I will put up some instructional pictures. Got the torque converter in,
removed the mufflers, rented a transmission jack and we popped it in.
Remaining problems are now the mufflers have to be modified to accomdate the
new support bar, and in Park, the shifter is already hitting the seat. I'm
also looking into putting in one drive shaft instead of the two that were in
there before. Has anybody done this? Any problems?
Mike
'55 1/2 ton second series
oletrucks is devoted to Chevy and GM trucks built between 1941 and 1959
|