I posted earlier about losing all gears while going to Big Bear saturday morning. Well I pulled the tranny out and dissassambled it today and Mr. Oldani,:thumbsup: you were right on the money!! The tangs on the drive gear that mate with the torque converter were sheared off.
My question is what caused this to happen?

The tranny gave out in 3rd gear, just after I manually downshifted to 2nd doing 40-50mph to pass a truck.

Everything else looks great, I can still read the mfr name and part numbers on the intermediate, direct, forward, and low-reverse friction plates, nearly new. Fluid was clean, too.

Is there anything I can do to prevent this again? Am I OK to still use that converter (Hughes 2000 stall, 6 mo's old), or did this damage it?

Any help and advice would be great.:(
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Jim
'64 Chevelle SS 383ci/TH350/10bolt 3.08

Maybe by doing some "reverse engineering" and looking at the drive tangs you can see where they failed, and determine how much engagement you had. What I'm getting at is possibly your converter was pulled too far forward (when tightened to the flexplate) and you were only engaging the tips of the drive lugs/slots.

On my setup I had over 1/4" freeplay between the flexplate and the converter mounting ears (with the converter fully bottomed in the front pump). Looking at the slots in the converter nose they're only about 1/4" deep - I didn't like this. I put a 1/8" thick flat washer between the flexplate and converter at each mounting hole to take up some of the slop. Being my anal retentive self I mic'd them and weighed them to ensure the balance would not be affected, and used red lock-tite on the bolts.

Wow, the tangs have a 1/16" dent on about 1/2 the depth of the tangs. So appearantly the converter was on, but not on far enough, as you say. That downshift was the clincher.

There seems to be no damage elswhere, even at the notches on the converter. maybe a good flushing, new pump, and I'm good? Should I consider doing anything else while I have it apart? Heard some mention doing a dual feed something or other, to get more fluid to the clutches? some saying a better sprag then the factory?

I've got it out and apart, better now than later.

What do you guys recommend?

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Jim
64 Chevelle SS