superchevy nov05

t last it’s all come together. You have the right car, the right stance, the right paint and interior, the right amount of horsepower, and even the proper approval from your better half. You’re a real road warrior, and with your wheel in hand and your foot on the gas the highway miles pass by effortlessly…or are they are effortless as you think? What about your driveline, is it out of sight and out of mind? With a mega-cubed engine pushing high horse and high torque numbers, a stock driveline will essentially constipate the full potential of your engine. It’s true that GM has built some of the toughest rock-rushing trannies in the automotive world, but as time progresses, these transmissions age. As technology progresses and gas prices climb high into the stratosphere, making some serious improvements to your car’s cruising potential will rise to the top of the to-do list.

If you’ve got a T-400 transmission that needs replacing, or any GM tranny for that matter, we have got a killer combination at which you should take a look. During the hottest time of the year, we found ourselves in Phoenix, Arizona, at the headquarters of Hughes Performance. If you’re not familiar with Hughes Performance, let us fill you in on what they do. Since 1971, Hughes has been involved with racing, specifically with transmissions. Not limiting themselves to just racing applications, Hughes Performance builds transmissions for all types of applications, whether is it street, strip, or towing; if they don’t have a transmission that’ll fit your needs, it does not exist. With this particular T-400 in our story, we have some Hughes Transmission facts for you to look at. Here’s what you get from

Hughes on this particular build:

• Cast-aluminum deep pan
• Intermediate Clutch kit w/Kolene
  steels
• Forward/Direct clutch kit w/Kolene
  steels and Kevlar bands front and
  rear.
• Hi-Pressure Performance oil pump
• All units are fully dyno tested.

Now, if you combine the rock-crushing transmissions that Hughes can build and you add a bulletproof Gear Vendors under/over drive unit. Not even Kryptonite can break this killer combination. Now that you are familiar with what Hughes performance has to offer, let’s take a look at what advantages a Gear Vendors unit can add. A Gear Vendors unit essentially splits your transmissions gears. With this overdrive unit attached to an automatic three-speed such as this T-400, you now have a six-speed transmission. Virtually all three-speed automatics have the same ratios within a few hundredths (2.5 First, 1.5 Second, 1.0 High). This means your transmission takes 2.5 engine revs to turn the driveshaft once in First gear. Gears are multipliers of torque and since the math of horsepower is: Torque x rpm /5,252 = hp then putting a 2.0 gear between First and Second is going to keep the torque multiplication and engine rpm both high which means more HP getting to the rear wheels. If we can then put a 1/2 gear between Second and Third, and an Overdrive gear beyond Third, we have a close ratio six-speed overdrive trans with four underdrive power gears and a direct drive High gear and an overdrive cruise gear. Thus, Gear Vendor’s Trademark Under/Overdrive is a type that can be used to double the underdrive performance ratios and provide overdrive cruising economies. Neat huh? Lets take a look at how easy this killer combination can come together.