I have a 264/stick, with the small trans. I have acquired a 322 tri duece with the big trans. (yay). I understand the big tran. is longer than the little one. Does any one have any info on cutting and shortening all that mess under the car. Obviously, the rear end would have to be pulled. Can a driveshaft shop handle this? would a welded sleeve stand up under daily driving? I guess if I could find the right tube and shaft, that would work, but I dont have a lot of hope for that. Thanks for any help.
If you have the 264, then you have a Special I assume. The Century for the same year had the 322 and the big trans, so you should look for that torque tube and drive shaft. Remember that if you cut the torque tube, you also need to cut the drive shaft. This can lead to balancing problems and lots of trouble.
This situation is fairly common with guys building early Ford hotrods. Typically they do have the drive shaft (inner of the tube) and the tube shortened. A real good welding shop should be able to do this for you. I know some guys who not only use the steel sleeve but also have pins installed through the sleeves and the original shaft. I think this was originally done just to locate the shaft/sleeve and give proper orientation.
Joe, I had a '55 Special many years ago, same as yours. Made lots of mods to it also. The original small trans is the definite weak link. That trans would not even hold up to a small staright 8. I got a big 6 bolt top cover trans from a '56 Special. It was about an inch or so longer overall. I just bolted it in. No changes to bellhousing, put the rear wheels in almost exact center of rear wheel wells. The hard part was getting my colomn linkage to work properly as the '56 was long gone. Heating & bending with torches on the rods got it to work. Eventually went to a floor shift. When I put in the 401 that car was fast, but it couldn't be shifted fast. When you did it would bind up the shift rails & it would get in two gears at the same time. Many main shafts were broken because of this. One time the whole bottom of the trans was gone only had high gear as the cluster & bottom of trans left the world somewhere on the highway. Fun days blowin' off 'vettes & GTO's with a '55 Buick.
