Ok here it goes. Just leisurely going down the freeway and shifted into 5 th gear and bam something happened. I could hear the drive shaft banging the floor and I tried to get the shifter into nuetral but it would not go. I slowed down and got off the road on the shoulder and when I stopped I moved the shifter it felt like there was nothing in there. I mean you can move the shifter and there are no gears to grab. I shut the motor down after I heard of bunch of ticking and hammering under the car.

So I wonder what broke first the tranny or the u-joint? I am guessing the tranny locked up and broke the u-joint. the way it sounded there was a bunch of racket in the bell housing area.

This is an 83 with the mechanical Z-bar operated clutch. Will I be able to get a newer trans and use this clutch hardware. I hope it did not put a hole through the tranny somewhere. This just happened so I haven't had a chance to get under it to look. I had it towed home so I hope the rearend is still good. If something happened to the rearend it probably would not have made it.

If it chunked the case I will be looking at a tremec maybe also. Plus will all my linkages work with a Tremec? Any thoughts on what to do would be appreciated. Still has the 305 with about 175 hp at the engine with maybe 140hp at the rear wheels I am guessing.

 

The trans does not care what operates the clutch. Any V8 T-5 for a F-body car will botl right in there and work.

I'd bet your U-joint failed, and there might not be anything at all wrong with the trans once you get a yoke back into the back of it, unless it broke the extension housing. I seriously doubt that the trans broke first.

 

I don't know about just the driveshaft. There was a lot of noise when I started it back up. A lot of noise. It don't matter if the clutch pedal is in or not the shifter is just to free to be connected to anything.