I have had awful luck with my car for a while. I blew out the ten bolt (lock right unit tanked) that I had in the car about a year and a half or two years ago. Well, I splurged, bought a 9" and upgraded to 4.10's with one of the cheap-o lock-rite units (i know, I'm seeing a pattern, too). I moved from Asheville, NC to Charlotte, NC soon after. On my way into a gas station I get a loud kachunk sound turning left. I get out (after filling the tank of course, because I just thought that the thing bound a little), and when I check the rear differential is hot. Really hot. I figured the old side gears that I reused were iffy when I installed everything but since I'll be on the highway a good chunk of the time I could get it to the new apartment. I get fifty feet out of the gas station and the super firm shift that I have built into the transmission causes the side gears to clatter and I totally lose all forward momentum. I figured I better just not tempt fate. Luckily, I've got the really good AAA so they tow it the rest of the way to Charlotte (an hour listening to a tow truck driver talking about how many times he had been held up was a little odd) and into my new apartment complex where it sits for about 5 months. Well, in that 5 months I go flat broke and end up moving back up to Asheville where I get a good job. First thing I do, even before getting my house to habitable condition, is rebuild the rear end with a true trac system reusing the same ring and pinion gear. This time, instead of doing it myself, I have a guy that builds race car rear ends do it. I get my newly rebuild center section back and install it. I don't get more than 50 feet out of the driveway when I go to take a gentle turn and one of my tires start dragging. Then I get back to my driveway thinking maybe the center section needs to go back to the guy to get adjusted. Well, I can't pull up my hill. Its all gas and no go. I put it in reverse. It goes. So, I start to do the reverse of the extremely short drive I just did and I lose reverse sitting at a diagonal in my street. I turn the car off, check my fluid, and although not pristine its not hot and doesn't smell burnt. I turn the car back on and on a hope and a prayer it drives up the driveway (hence why I love this car). I get it in the garage and figure I should take the tranny pan off. Oh yes, my friend. Metal, it looks like ball bearings soaked in gravy at the bottom of my tranny pan. I take the transmission out that night and disassemble. The entire rear section is just chunked, hence, explaining why I lost drive and got it back, things just happened to bind up correctly. Well, I'm going to go pick up a different tranny (this is going to be a th350, I'm done with this 700r4 voodoo. My question, could the shrapnel in my transmission have caused the driveline in its entirety to lock up and make my tire drag or do I still have an issue with the rear end? When the transmission was out and the car was up on jackstands (also no driveshaft installed), my exgirlfriend and I tried to test the functioning of the true trac unit by the test procedures they had listed in the manual. She wasn't really the strongest girl in the world so she would have a hard time holding the tire firmly and getting the unit to engage/disengage. It seemed like if I clicked things fast that the unit in fact would function. Occasionally it was tight, or felt like it, but again I couldn't push it real hard or my ex would lose her grip on the tire. What I could do, however, was take the slack out of the tire in the other direction and spin it forward again and things worked just dandy. Yes, I just used the word dandy.

Sorry for the length of this post but before I drive this car another mile with our without a new transmission I really want to know what the deal is.

Thanks so much!
Mike

 

sounds like the plates got caught up in the metal and locked up causing the drive shaft to lock up rear should be fine my words are not the bible just an opinion. should be fine and dandy (jk) when the new tranny is installed.