A Few Updates

First and most significantly, the Getrag 360 transmission lived up to its reputation and grenaded it's self on the highway at ~65mph with my girlfriend in the front seat with me. We were on our way to IKEA and I truly believe this was Gods way of saying that chipboard furniture is the work of Satan and he was personally saving me from an eternity of damnation and unpronounceable Swedish disposal Crap. Luckily, afore mentioned significant other has AAA and so we got rescued by a sullen but prompt flat bed driver who hauled my truck back to my shop for tip money, saying not a single word the entire time he was in our presence. I have since ordered and received and brand new NV4500 transmission and bell housing adapter from Smart Parts on sale for the incredible price of $1400 all in. I found an old school transmission shop about 3 miles from my shop run buy a guy who loves to restore late 60's Japanese cars and was totally into helping me get this new trans installed. He's also going to swap out the rear end gears from the 4:10 in it now to a set of 3:55's I have coming. With the 4:10 rear end ration the engine was screaming at 60mph in top gear and really wouldn't have gone much faster even downhill. I know I need new tires and I'm going to go with 17" rims which will allow me to run real truck tires and gain a few inches in tire diameter as well which will help. The Getrag top gear is .77 and the NV4500 is .73 so with the 3:55 rear gears I should be able to cruse at 65-70mph with the engine in the 2-2.2K rpm range in top gear. Other than this I have spent a few hours sorting out some of the teething problems but for the most part everything works. I did have a loose wire that was keeping the dash gauge lights from lighting. That's fixed. Also the tach was set wrong effectively reading 1.5 times that actual engine rpm. One other problem I do have to address is that with the heaver engine and trans the front springs are sagging too much. When we first installed the engine, it looked like the suspension was holding the extra weight in the right place but as it turns out after being on the road, it is sitting too low. It's low enough that under load from large bumps the right front tie rod is slightly impacting the oil pan, so that will be addressed by a set of heavy duty springs that are stiffer and 1" longer than stock.
 Hopefully the transmission and rear end work will be done by Dave (Dave’s transmissions) while I’m in Bonneville helping my team defend its current record at speed week starting august 24^th.