What transmission would I get for a 1973 sport coupe? I dont know anything about them, so what do I have to consider? Help would be great!

 

depends on the application. what motor and rear gears are you running, what power are you making, what do you plan to use the car for? Are you going for factory replacement or something better?

 

How would I go about finding all that out?

 

I would have to suggest going with the th-350 just for the fact that its a really strong tranny and plus you can put alot of hp behind it if you wanted. I'd say at least 500hp. If your gonna be doing any highway driving, go with a 4 speed manual.

 

Well the camaro is an automatic. so what would be best options?

 

Like I said in my other post, I would have to recommend going with a th-350. It's a strong, reliable transmission for every day use and if further down the road your looking to install some performance parts, you already have the transmission. Even though the th-350 is a 3-speed transmission, you could change the rear-end gears to 3.55:1 or a 3.23:1 to make up for the only 3 speeds in the transmission if your going to be doing any highway driving or if your concerned about fuel mileage.

 

I dont know hardly anything about rear ends, so what are these ratios? you are saying things like 3.55:1. what does that mean? How do you find that out? SOrry if I sound like a complete dumbass here, I just need to learn a few things.

 

Not a problem, dont worry about it thats the whole point of these forums. If the car is all original, then I assume the rear differential (a.k.a. rear end) is also the original one. The best way to do it is, put the rear of the car up on jackstands then put a white mark with like chalk or something on the driveshaft and spin the tire once. While spinning the tire, count the amount of complete revolutions the driveshaft makes. That is the method used to find out what rear end gears you have in your car if you dont have a build sheet or if there isn't alittle metal tag attached to one of the bolts of the rear differential housing. To make it easy to understand, I will use the gear ratio 4:1. When you buy gears, you get a ring gear and a pinion gear. The pinion gear attached to the driveshaft and meshes with the ring gear inside the rear differential. The 4:1 ratio, means that the ring gear has 40 teeth and that the pinion gear has 10 teeth. So therefore, after 1 complete revolution of the ring gear, the pinion gears is going to have made 4 complete revolutions.

The bigger the gear ratio for example 4.10:1, 4.30:1, and 4.56:1 the more off the line torque your going to have and the vehicle is going to accelerate really fast. A gear ratio like 2.73:1, 3.08:1, or 3.23:1 are going to allow you to achieve a much higher top speed but won't launch the car as fast. The first sets of gear ratios I mentioned are termed "low gears" (for low end torque) and the seconds sets of gear ratios I mentioned are termed "high gears" (for high end top speed).

I hope this information helps you out. If you have anymore questions feel free to ask.

Tim

 

So for the exmple 4:1, the 4 stands for how many revolutions the drive shaft makes in comparison to the 1 which stand for 1 revolution of the wheel? I think I got it now. thanks!

 

Yes sir, thats exactly what it means! Anything else, just ask?

Tim