Hi all,

Two weeks ago I installed a new TCI Competition TH400 in my Prostreet 69 Camaro: 427, 671 Blower w/ 2 x 750 Dominators, 3000 Nitrous Holeshot Converter, Narrowed ladder-bar 12-bolt with 4.88 posi Richmond gears, 18.50 x 31 Sportsmans...

Wanting to install something tough, I bought the heavy TCI Competition TH400 with the Vasco input shaft, red eagle clutches, transbrake, deep pan, etc. It has a full manual, reverse valve body and is supposed to be good for 1000 HP+. I'm probably making somewhere around 700 hp with this blown big block, so it should be a good safe match-up, right ?

Uh, yeah...

After getting the car down off the stands and cruising around town for a few days, making sure everything was hunky dory, I finally did two rolling launches with the car, at about 3/4 throttle, through 1st and 2nd gear...

After the 2nd launch, I came back down and found I had no 2nd gear, and it would lock up the rear tires when dropped into 3rd. Every time. First gear and reverse (using transbrake in nuetral) worked fine, but no 2nd gear, and a 3rd gear only good for parking the car at speed. Great.

I pulled the trans pan and found what appear to be 8 sheared case lugs laying in the pan. I pulled the trans back out this afternoon and it'll be shipping back to TCI this next week. Geezo...

Anyone else have this experience with TH400's ?

Here are the sheared case lugs

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and here is the offending hardware

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I have seen it with stock trans with just shift kits installed. Just not that many at one time though. what did TCI say or have you called them yet?

 

Hi Firebird,

I spoke with TCI and was told I likely split the sprag in the 2nd gear assembly (roughly quoting from memory) and that is what caused the failure. In sort of a chicken-egg ponder, I'm not sure what happened first, the split sprag or the case lug failure. I don't know enough about the internals on these trans to know for certain, but I'd guess it was the sprag failure that dominoed down to taking the case lugs out. Just my guess.

I've shipped the trans back to TCI, they should have it early next week and I'm expecting them to replace the trans with a new unit. They also volunteered to flush my new B&M Nitrous Holeshot converter for me, so I included it with the trans shipment. I was concerned I'd have to eat this $600 converter but was told it probably will just need to be flushed out to make sure it doesn't carry junk forward to the new trans. Hopefully they can get the new trans back to me pretty quickly so I can get this thing back on the street.

I'll post an update later on.

 

MAN what a BEAST you have there - Definitely a Labor of Love and Dedication. I live in Northern Ontario were endless miles of HWY wind through the Cambrian Shield and go nowhere. There are not enough Streets to run the Beast you have so my ride is what you might classify as a HWY Cruiser or a Cannon Ball. This does not prevent me from attending Street or Drag Strip Events to Respectively Admire Pro Street Machines and from what I see you must have one H*LL of a Class Act to be able to run 700+Hp on the street and keep it legal.

 

Alot of states in the US have registration classes that are exempt from street legality issues like emisions and having a hood and fenders. Here in Maryland we have Street Rod and Pro Street registration for Historic and Non-historic vehicles respectively that have major modifications to the original factory setup, and depending on the state, that can be body, internal, either or both. In Maryland, if you have a historic car with an aftermarket scoop, you can get street rod tags for $27.

 

Thanks for the nice comments

Iā€™d love to be able to say I built this ride but I canā€™t. I bought the Camaro last spring from a fellow back in Omaha, NE. A very nice guy, heā€™d had the car for quite a few years and did the local show-n-shine circuit with it on a regular basis. I had Intercity Lines transport the car out to California and have since been revamping, upgrading and adding to it.

Itā€™s a beautiful prostreet ride and a seriously wicked stoplight predator but it has never been on a race track. Iā€™m planning to hit Sacramento Raceway this coming year and donā€™t want to leave spare parts lying on the track. To that end Iā€™ve been swapping ā€˜softā€™ parts out for hard core stuff to avoid those loud snapping / popping / crunching crowd-pleasing noises weā€™ve all witnessed.

Iā€™ve added a full set of Autometer gauges and monster tach, swapped the original TH400 for a full competition trans w/transbrake (still waiting on my replacement trans to ship from TCI), and Iā€™m now trading out the small tube (1.75ā€) headers for big tube (2.125ā€) Super Comps. After that Iā€™ll replace the original 1310 u-joints and driveline with bigger 1350ā€™s and next will swap the shortened and resplined stock axles with something a lot stouter. In the end I need to have a combination that will handle doing full rpm launches in a 3000 lb+ car on the transbrake.

Iā€™ve re-jetted (8 x 74ā€™s) and upsized the shooters (4 x 31ā€™s) on the two Dominators and gotten a lot of the bog out of the bottom end. Thatā€™s what I was testing when I lunched the new TCI trans a few weeks back (TCI tells me I split the 2nd gear sprag). After I get the header, driveline and axle stuff upgraded Iā€™ll play with the cogs on the blower. At 8 to 9 percent under-driven, this thing makes 5 to 7 pounds of boost. Just by swapping the top and bottom cogs, I can get to 8 or 9 percent over which should help increase boost pressure and move the boost point a lot lower in the rpm range. Weā€™ll see. Based on this motor / cam / blower / carb combo, I should be making between 700 and 800 hp, but I donā€™t really know yet. Iā€™d like to put it on a chassis dyno this next spring to see what sort of power itā€™s really making. Once I get to the track Iā€™m hoping I can get into the mid 10ā€™s, making it a serious D/Gas street ride. With the drive-train combination I have, thatā€™s probably not too far off.

Wrapped around all of this upgrade effort is the need to maintain the clean lines and beautiful appearance of the ride. I want to keep this thing as pristine as it was when I bought it but I want to make a serious beast on the track as well. Weā€™ll see how it turns out.

As to being legal for the street: Even with all their stringent emissions standards, California exempts pre-74 vintage autos from strict emissions testing and smog controls. This allows old fanatics like me to own, license and drive things like this Camaro on the street. Theyā€™ve really been cracking down on street racing everywhere and you have to be very, very careful what you do out in public. All the ugly incidents with import street racers have soured a lot of folks on high-performance street rides so youā€™ve got to avoid doing goofy things on the street. So far, us old gear-heads are safe with these old muscle cars but you can still get yourself in trouble if you do dumb things out there.

Anyway, sorry for the long and windy editorial here. Iā€™ve been thinking about doing this for so many years that Iā€™m still in shock over the fact that I have a blown 427 Camaro in my garage downstairs (laughing). So far my wife is very understanding and very supportive and Iā€™m getting to know a lot of people doing this same sort of thing. Hot rodding is alive and well all over the US and I love the fact that it crosses so many age groups. Iā€™m turning 51 this year but can still connect with a 20 or 30 year old fellow gear head. Cool st

 

Hereā€™s an update to my original post:

Well, the new TCI trans is in. TCI was very good about taking care of things. They paid freight both ways and turned the new rebuilt trans around three days after they received the old one. So far so good.

I also bit the bullet and bought my new Hooker Super Comps. These things are HUGE! The original headers in the car had 1 3/4" primaries, the new ones are 2 1/8". They look awesome but were a pain to install. It was more than worth the effort though; the sound is very clean and crisp and that Rat really likes the new flow.

Unfortunately the new collectors also hang *way* down low, a lot lower than the original headers. The ride had a really low profile and I really liked the look. I was going to try and live with the low pipes but found I couldnā€™t even get out of my shop <g>. D-uh...

I was concerned I would have to replace a set of dropped spindles, backing plates, etc. Turns out that all the builder did was clip a couple of turns off the original springs up front. So, I did a last minute banzai run to pick up OEM coils for the front.

I pulled the front end apart and installed the new springs. You can see from the photo how it looks at this point. Itā€™s pretty high still but Iā€™m expecting it to settle pretty soon as the new spring set in and the new bushings find their home. I regretted having to change the look of the ride but it is more practical now - I won't have to live in fear of speed bumps any more.

I raised the rear suspension up one hole on the spring mounts and think that'll be enough once the front end settles. As you can see in the pix it is pretty much back to stock ride height. I am amazed how different it looks, it really changes the whole personality of the car.

Yesterday I trailered down to Muffler Tech in Sacramento to get the exhaust finished. I used 3ā€ pipes into 14 inch Magnaflows, exiting just ahead of the rear wheels (see photos). The guys at Muffler Tech did an outstanding job on the exhaust. The car is now quiet enough to be legal at cruising speed but really wails at throttle. Finest kind ļŠ

Anyway, these are the most recent mods to the Camaro. Assuming I have no more problems with the trans, next stop will be new hardware for the rear (considering a new narrowed Ford 9 inch ā€“ weā€™ll see).

Cheers [sm=gears.gif]

Harry



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