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Broke the tailshaft


GatorDog72

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Hey all! Been a while since I've posted. I drove my car to the Syracuse Nationals over the weekend and on the way home started getting a really bad vibration. I checked it out today and the tail shaft has tons of play and is moving around in the housing. The seal was also popped out. It's a built TH400 automatic. I'm not nice to this car and it makes quite a bit of power. I'm thinking when I put the hammer down, something is moving that shouldn't be. Possible bad pinion angle/ trans misalingment? I'm running the stock trans cross-member and mount, maybe it's time to upgrade to something beefier? 

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Sounds like the bushing inside the tailhousing has gone bad. Have you taken out driveshaft? What does the yolk look like? Do you have a short yolk or a long? U joints ok?

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Sounds like the bushing inside the tailhousing has gone bad. Have you taken out driveshaft? What does the yolk look like? Do you have a short yolk or a long? U joints ok?

Yeah, the bushing is toast for sure. Yolk is still good and so are the U-joints. I was lucky to find the problem before the tail housing exploded and I ran over the driveshaft. The transmission is brand new, I guarantee it doesn't have 500 miles on it. I figured the trans would be the weak point and the first thing to break, just didn't expect it to break so quickly!

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Glad you caught it in time! The question is why did this happen in 500 mi? Is the u-joint free and not binding? Is the yolk going into the trans enough? Is the driveshaft bent or out of balance? Usually all of these can cause the tailshaft bushing to get beaten to death. Or the rebuilder didn't install a new bushing when the trans was rebuilt. It's easy so I don't think that was it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I hope with all that power you are not running the factory crossmember! The one that's held in at the frame in rubber cups. Your getting a lot of movement if you are and that's certainly going to create a lot of premature wear. You need to go with a solid mount crossmember form a Chevelle. It's an easy bolt in operation and they are easy enough to find because the are being reproduced.

 

Steve

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