Well the first real road test was a fizzle.

I did the primary setup on the transmission controller and took it out on the road to drive the 2 miles I needed to calibrate the speedometer. I made it a little less than a mile and all at once I had a severe vibration. I ended up managing to limp it back home and got it back up in the air.

I’d spit out one of the bearing caps on the front U Joint. So I pull the drive shaft out to inspect the damage and see if I could figure out what happened to cause the new U joint to come apart. Of course to add insult to injury when I went to take out the bolts that hold the straps on the rear yolk one of them seized and snapped off.


I inspected the drive shaft and front yolk closely and fortunately they’ll live. So I decided to go into town and pick up a new U Joint and strap kits with new bolts. I told the counter guy what I needed and he knew the part number (or thought he did) off the top of his head and brought out a new U joint. I’d taken what was left of the joint that had blown up in and we matched them up, and at a glance they looked good. I told him what had happened to the old joint and just to be on the safe side he asked me for an application for the joint and looked it up in the catalog. The catalog showed a different part number than the joint he had brought out. When we compared the two new joints the cross and bearing caps on both U joints measured the same…..the difference was the spacing on the groove for the internal snap rings. What I’m thinking now is that I had put the wrong joint in and one of the snap rings didn’t fully seat and I didn’t catch it.

When I got back to the shop I crawled back under the truck again to take a look at the broken bolt in the differential yolk. Back in my younger (dumber) days I probably would have crawled under there with a drill and easy out but being a little wiser now I pulled the yolk off and just took it over to Dave at the machine shop. I was kind of hoping Dave maybe had a spare yolk laying around but no such luck. Anyway Dave drilled it out for me (it’s a hardened bolt) and after getting the new front U joint in, it was time for another road test.


The second road test went much better, I drove out to Dave’s (69Bee) machine shop. On the way I managed to get the speedometer calibrated (which was a good thing as the state police had set up a speed trap on the road between Dave’s and my place sometime while I was over there).

37 Road Test 2 by M Patterson, on Flickr

I stopped by the gas station on the way back and topped the tank off to verify the sending unit was set up correctly and by the time I got back to the house I’d put about 15 miles on it.

The truck is a ball to drive, it goes down the road straight and is not as uncomfortable as I thought it would be. The 4.56s are a ton of fun and the overdrive transmission was a good choice. At 65 it drops the RPM down from 3300 RPM to around 2200. I’ve got to do some more dialing in with the controller for the OD and lockup which I’ll probably play with tomorrow.

All and all it was a pretty good afternoon. I got a bunch of thumbs up (except for the cop with the radar gun who seemed to be scowling )




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