Top score list?

[guudasitgets]

You can put Hewland gears in pretty much anything, in SCCA racing the old production cars (Austin-Healey Sprite/Midget) MGB's; Triumph Spitfires) are doing it for years. You have to have all the shafts made for them. Just remmember though, thier really loud! and you won't have ANY synchros. You can shift without the clutch, if your good (read fast) And you can have ANY ratios to choose from (there are hundreds of combinations depending on the tracks straighaway length). But they do use less power and there are fewer rotating parts. Drag racers use air shifters on them, so all they need is a button on the steering wheel.

[Intrigued]

Yeah, at our local drag strip, up close to Springfield MO, they differentiate some between the ones who use air or other means of quick shifting. Those of us who never had the money to do that like to say stuff like "real men shift for themselves," but in reality we're just VERY jealous...

One guy this year somehow got in between gears, got mad, and then melted his slicks. Finally just coasted through the lights. Then the announcer started razzin' on the shifter diffs...

...Hey, a P&G!!!

[BlackDeuceCoupe]

Originally Posted by Ford Man

I'll bet I've got the only '88 Escort.

I'll bet I've got he only Honda B16x that gets 40+ MPG!

[BlackDeuceCoupe]

Originally Posted by Intrigued

Ahh, yes. A man who plays with the Big Boys. Some of that I've heard of; some not.

Back to the tranny stuff: I still haven't had a chance to talk to Dad yet, but synchros have not been around all that long. If I remember right (someone in the know correct me here ), on the '49 to '51 Fords, there was only partial synchronization, and grinding down teeth helped a lot. It would help with mass, for sure. A '51 Victoria with the Mercury engine, Offy intake and two 2-barrel carbs, milled heads, and a 3-speed with overdrive was the first car I ever drove...

My first car was a '52 Ford Coupe - got me hooked on Coupes early in life!

I put a '52 Merc engine in it, with a 3/4" stroker kit - and eventually an '52 Olds 303 with a Vertex magneto and (wow) electric fuel pump!

These were all bolted up to 3-speed Ford trannies. They lasted about 6-months, on average - and, only second and third gear had syncros on them. If you wanted to shift into first gear, you had to come to a stop, or lock up the rear wheels.

I'm 99.9% sure the '49-'51 Ford trannies were the same, but the front-suspensions sucked! That was the main difference - bodywork aside...

[Intrigued]

Yeah, there was a change body-wise between '51 and '52. In the good old days I could have told you at a half-mile what year and make a car was, and tell the trim difference as they went by. Nowadays they all look alike to me...

Dad seemed to have a lot of trouble with the flathead blocks. Somewhere was a weak point, and if the thing ever got hot it would crack somewhere. We were always having to go to the drugstore to get a bottle of stuff called "waterglass" that he would pour into the radiator.

His always had the overdrive in whichever car he had. We would see a snapped axle once in a while, and if you ever got stuck in the snow and tried to rock it free, there was a spider gear somewhere that would always lose teeth or similar. Something to do with first gear, I think...

Oh, and it wasn't those trannys that they would take every other tooth off of for speed shifting (talked to him this morning). He said the things were just too weak! I'm guessing you and he could go on about old Ford stuff for some time!!!

So... is that a '32 you have???