A buddy of mine just kind of told me that I'm welcome to the rear that used to be in his '69 Camaro drag car. He told me it is an early 10 bolt, but with an open carrier. I need to figure out what ratio it is, but I am hoping it is something good. Can the chunk be removed and put into the rear of my '72 Chevelle? Can I tell what the ratio is by spinning it?

Anyways, there's a guy in my neighborhood that told me he'll put it in for me, providing it fits. He said he'll take the chunk out, and use my spider gears and axles. Does this make sense?

im assuming you by "chunk" you mean the open carrier and ring and pinion...and while technically you could do it, it would be a very involved process for quite honestly no gain. my gut instinct tells me you are thinking of a ford 9inch where where you can swap the "pumpkins" fairly easily.

about the only thing that makes sense about this is if the 10 bolt out of the camaro has a ring and pinion that is a ratio you want, and it that case you would remove them from the and have then installed in your 10 bolt. and that involves some specialty tools to properly set the backlash.

since you have a 72 chevelle, there is a slight chance that you might have an 8.5 10 bolt.....an early 10 bolt out of a 69 camaro will be a 8.2, and in that case you the ring and pinion are not interchangeable.

lastly, if you take the cover off the his ten bolt you can count the teeth to determine the gear ratio.
ring gear teeth count / pinion gear teeth count = gear ratio.

hope that helps? your post was a bit confusing

Yeah, thanks for the help. I was actually just reading it and noticed the same thing.

I have an early 8.2" rear. I know that the ratio in it is around 2.50:1, and that is has an open carrier.

My friend has this 8.2" open carrier from his car....believed to be complete, it was working when yanked.

I am trying to find out if this is a realistic possibility before I go acting like I am interested in this thing.

It could have any ring gear in it, I know that. It might have gears that match the codes, it might not. By codes, there doesn't look to be a good chance that it has a nice low gear in it. It looks like there were waaay more 10 bolt '69 Camaros equipped with 2.56 and 2.73 gears than anything else. I guess that there were a few with 3.55 and 3.73 open rears. I'll have to see, but not until I know if this will even work.


Maybe the guy that told me he could do this is confused. He builds race engines for boats/drag cars/circle track, and has been at it for a while, so I'm thinking he knows what he is doing. My friend with the Camaro, and this other guy both live in my neighborhood. The dude has set up the rear in all of my bud's cars. I'm certain he does it right, measuring backlash and looking at grease marks or patterns or whatever.;)

What I got out of him telling me he could do it, was that he'd take the ring and pinion out of the Camaro and use my spider gears/axles, and that all he needed from the Camaro to do it was the center chunk. I think that's where I got this idea of him needing the center chunk out of it. Maybe I misunderstood him, or didn't do such a swell job explaining it.

Does this make more sense or should I just hang it up? :confused::clonk::D

Mostly pain w/little net gain to justify it. Pass. :beers:

Why not save the gear ratio upgrade (if there is any to be had in the first place) for when you install a more stout rear end or positraction (which I assume you want to do at some point). Swapping gears from one (weak) 10-bolt open rear to another (weak) 10-bolt open rear would be a whole lot of work for not much. Plus, if he had been using this rear in a race car the chances are they are pretty worn and, again, probably not worth even messing with.

Thanks for the input. The way I am looking at this, is if I can go from a shoddy 2.56 open to a 3.55 or 3.73 open, then it is worth it to me. Chances are, the guy will charge me $50 or $100 to do the work.