Auto to manual conversion. If you could do it over....regrets, pitfalls, long term opinions???
Someone transplanted a 4spd in my 67 belvedere.
Pros:
Fun to shift gears
More control of Rpms
Great to do burnouts
Cons:
Hurts my knee after to long I'm only 35 lol.
I don't care much for the Z bar set up
Cruising thru parking lots shakes like hell with 3:23 sure grip.
Can never get the clutch adjusted quite right.
I'd say for my next project I'm going with the T56 with hydraulic clutch set up
Dustin
I agree that you're having a clutch problem. Or perhaps a SureGrip issue. Or perhaps an engine low-speed issue, or just plain old; too much cam for the 3.23s. Which is the came as not enough gear for the cam. I love the 3.09 low in the 1964 tranny I have, and with 3.55s;that's a 10.97 starter gear. With 27 inch tires that would be 12.34 corrected to a 24" tire. This works excellent with my 360, in a 3650#chassis (me in it).
With a smaller engine and a big cam, a little more gear might be nice.
I should also mention that some combos do not like a lot of idle-timing with hiway gears; they get real jumpy down low. The bigger the cam,and the more compression,the jumpier it will be.
My 360 runs a 276/286/110 fast-rate cam (I think .541/.579 lifts) and 10.9 Scr, and I normally run 14* of Idle-timing to fight this jumpiness. But I often crank the timing back to 5 degrees, with my dash-mounted, dial-back timing device. That tames her down to 4mph@about 550rpm. With a little-clutch slippage, I can get down to a comfortable walking speed.
By retarding the timing, the pressure spike occurs well down on the power stroke, and the pulse is much weaker,and the piston is moving away from the expanding gasses.
I also use a heavy steel flywheel.
You might need a 360 to do that tho, on account of it has inherently more low-rpm torque.It all depends on the rest of the combo.
Honestly tho, 2.66x3.23=8.59 starter gear,and that just sux at low rpm.
