OneStopRestoration's Special Orange 69 Chevelle 300 Deluxe Coupe

[Zman1969]

Man I played with a Sun Distributor machine in H/S auto shop I'd love to find one locally as shipping is prohibitive. Yours is restored nicely BTW

[OneStopRestoration]

Originally Posted by Zman1969

Man I played with a Sun Distributor machine in H/S auto shop I'd love to find one locally as shipping is prohibitive. Yours is restored nicely BTW

I got mine from Paramount many years back. There about double what i payed if there are any avaialbe. I have noticed there stock comes and goes really quickly. I thought about getting a used one but it concerned me as to wether a used one would work and then be reading accurately.

[OneStopRestoration]

Sourced an alternator for the car. Just basic disassembly and recondition of the case. I was replacing diodes at one time when doing these but i never have seen where there needed. You can get fancy and do the lettering on the rear of each diode, but i passed this time. New bearings front and rear along with a new set of brushe and all hardware replated. Repro pulley which honestly look really good to me compared to originals.

[OneStopRestoration]

My dad had a set of 4:56 GM gears that came from a very early 67 chevelle ss he had. Thats a story for a different day. Got a used 4 series carrier. I spent several days on this. I cleaned and checked the clutch packs which included shimming per the GM overhaul book.

For setup up of the gear pattern i use a case spreader as to not pound on the shims. This especially gets helpfull when setting up a new set of gears to a housing. After 2 days of in and out with both the pinion shims and the diff shims I got to something I was happy with. The process even with the spreader is very tiring. Shocked on this setup as the pinion shim ended up being the stock .025 which is much thinner than most others i have heard about and done. Most cases as i have seen the stock shim with the housing will work on the next setup even in gears are changed(well for GM for sure)

Once everyting is setup you take all apart put in fresh roller tapper bearings on the pinion, do the torque procedure of the crush sleeve to get the proper drag and then slam in the diff.

I was glad once it was under the car. That only took 30 mins compared to about 3 days.

[WILMASBOYL78]

The project looks great...your tach will get a work out with those 4.56 gears

Can't wait to hear that motor fire up

[scuncio]

Where did you source the case spreader?

[OneStopRestoration]

Originally Posted by scuncio

Where did you source the case spreader?

I think i ordered it off Ebay many years back. I did a quick search and I cant find anything like the unit i have. I think i paid close to 200 and that was well before the past few years insane inflation. Its mostly made of cold rolled. Ive considered redoing the arms that are paralell to the diff bearings with some stronger hot rolled. You can kinda see in the picture the setup is bent from use. Problem is I just set it back in its storage place and will forget about it till the next car. It gets the job done. I could never find alot of great information either about a safe acceptable spread distance. I keep the max travel .008 to .009. I somewhat recall geting .012 or .015 is about the max, but I dont feel like tempting fate.

[big gear head]

Originally Posted by scuncio

Where did you source the case spreader?

I have one that i got from Randy's Ring & Pinion many years ago when I was a dealer for them. I owned a rear end shop for 15 years and I think I only used the spreader 2 times, and those were aluminum cases. https://www.randysworldwide.com/shop/yt-s01

[OneStopRestoration]

Originally Posted by WILMASBOYL78

The project looks great...your tach will get a work out with those 4.56 gears

Can't wait to hear that motor fire up

I kinda hope i did all the math properly. I see most original 4.10 and higher geared GM cars got gear reducers. I managed to find a combination with the main shaft driven gear, and speedo gear that should work without a reducer. Maybe GM didnt have alot of combinations back in the day?