Quote:
Originally Posted by PAUL K
Me too! But I'm thinking I'll replace the three speed with a TH400 
Interesting stuff for sure. The three speed gear boxes were always hard to sell... Mostly dirt track racers wanted them.
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THIS ^^^^
No missed gears, shifter jambs, and worn out clutches, repeatable consistency, It's not the form of racing that appeals to me anyway (drag racing), I like corners incorporated into my racing, but have equally successful with T400 in dirt track cars, as well as autocross, and road racing.
99.9% of dirt cars, as Paul K lamented, have 1,2,3, or 4 speed manual shifted transmissions, but I never felt I gave anything away using a T400. For awhile, gutted Power Glides without convertors were in a good many late model stock cars. The early dirt cars I built back in the early 70s, (61 Catalina, Ventura's, bubbletop cars) we used the Dearborn 3 speeds, and ran them in 2nd gear to get the correct final drive. Never even a hint of problems with the Dearborns, but they also aren't shifting gears during the race.
Since I drove semi for 7 years, I have zero hankering to shift gears on a street car. I have one IH wrecker with a stick in it, and if I had an Allison sitting around, the wrecker would also have an automatic in it too. Typically the automatic transmission is easier on drivelines too.
The next street car I build will have a 4L80E in it. My late model 2005 GTO has a 4L60E in it. I bought it new, so I could have had a 6 speed in it, but was driving truck at the time, so the last thing I wanted to do in my D/D was to row gears.
When I first got into street cars, and racing, everything I had was a manual transmission in it. After lying under them fixing all the driveline failures from clutches to rear axles, and everything in between, I bought my first T400 equipped GTO, and my time underneath the cars was reduced dramatically, as well as monetary expenditures for broken driveline parts,
lesson learned.