[VintageMusclecar]

Joel;

I haven't pulled the cover yet, but the rear end turned fine w/o any tight spots, binding, etc. yesterday while I was removing the broken rear section of the driveshaft. I will pull the cover and verify things before putting the car back together.

Mark;

The trans was fresh and the yoke slid in with ease. There weren't any signs of damage there that I'm aware of.

The rear end was built with a solid pinion spacer. I'll only use a crush sleeve on a stock build.

Kurt;

The pan is a deep sump design which resolved a serious oil control issue, plus it was worth over 25 HP on the dyno over another "race" oil pan.

At this point I've narrowed my options down to the following:

1) Repair and put the Muncie based trans back in and figure out how to get a 4" drive shaft under the car. This means some sort of trans tunnel surgery, but what the hell at this point, right?--the old shaft just started the process for me.

2) Find a suitable manual trans that has a longer tail section which by default reduces the length of the driveshaft which in turn reduces the critical speed issue and allows the use of a smaller diameter driveshaft.

3) For the time being, put a long tail shaft 400 Turbo in the car. The long shaft 400 is 9.5" longer than the short shaft version which takes the driveshaft from 60" down to 51.5". That would move the pinion yoke back far enough to make room for the use of a 3.5" mild steel shaft which has a critical speed limit of 7418 rpm @ 52" or a CM shaft which is good to just over 7500.

I need to get the busted box out and see what I have left to work with and go from there....but as much as I hate to say it, the 400 Turbo is looking like a pretty attractive solution at this point.