After three months, my car is finally done... again. Blah. Summer is halfway over. Back in April, I'm cruising around in my car and attempt to drag a 2013 Challenger at a stop light. We were just playing around. I pop the car into 4th gear and all hell breaks loose. I heard a loud bang, the car shook violently, the transmission got stuck in 4th, the engine starting making clicking noises, etc.

I pulled to the side of the road and noticed my rear wheels where no longer straight. The drive shaft fell out of the transmission and was on the ground, with transmission fluid leaking. It was a sad day :



Well, we found the culprit. The rear leaf spring on the passenger side was so rusted, it split when I gunned it :



The entire leaf spring shifted back on the passenger side:





This caused the drive shaft to come out and misaligned my entire rear end. The misaligned rear end caused the car to shake as I moved down the road and that caused havok everywhere else. Some of the spark plug wires got severed, my engine mounts were destroyed. As the car bounced around, it punched holes in my exhaust headers. That was the clicking noise.

My 5 speed transmission was completely destroyed too. Not sure why. I couldn't get it out of 4th gear and I could hear parts rattling around inside.

I'm just glad the car failed when it did because it could have been a lot worse! Imagine if I were going 75 down the interstate when this happened...

I took this as an opportunity to do some serious upgrades to the car.

I purchased and installed the complete 6-Speed Transmission Conversion Kit with Tremec T56 Magnum. I know have a hydraulic clutch. Since the rear leaf springs needed to be replaced, I decided to remove the old traction bars and replaced them with a set of Caltrac traction bars.

The Tremec T56 Tranmission in the box when it arrived. This will be fun, heh :
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The drive shaft required modification. I also needed new exhaust headers, spark plug wires, and fan shroud.

Well, after three months, the car is FINALLY complete! What a bummer since summer is halfway over, but at least there's time left to cruise. My only complaint right now is that the clutch pedal doesn't travel very far to the floor when you press it. There's literally only 2 inches of movement from being completely out to hitting the floor. Not sure I like that.

Other than that, the 6 speed manual transmission is really nice. Its a HUGE upgrade from what I had previously.

 

what a bummer that it happened but as you said it could have been worse. By the was great looking 67