[Soonerfan41]

Hi! Nice to be on a site with so many other Nova lovers. I have a question, I just recently purchased a 1966 Nova. The car would be what they are calling a pro street car. The guy I bought it from just drag raced it, he did not drive it on the street with the fuel setup that he had on the car.....he was running a rons flying toilet burning str8 ethanol. Anyway, back to my question...he has been racing this car with a 388 sbc producing 600 horse, running 11.00's at 5000 feet of elevation. The car still has the stock rear end....8.2 ten bolt with stock axles! The car does have a ladder bar setup on it and there is a spool in the rear end. He was running a transbrake launching at 3200 RPMs with no problems....he said that he has broken the spool twice.....when he got greedy and tried to launch at a higher rpm. I also plan on drag racing this car and don't want to have to replace the spool every other month. Is there an alternative to buying a complete 12 bolt Moser or Strange rear end set up???? I read an article on chevy high performance about a rear end swap using the 8.5 rear ends out of the 73-79 Nova's, but they are too wide for the first gen cars. Any help would be appreciated. Sorry that was so long winded!

 

[Real McCoy]

I'm not smart on the 8.5 or 8.2 rearends but it's hard to beleive that a full spool would fail and not break an axels first, if they are stock. Is it a full spool or a mini spool? Does the rear end have c clip eliminators on it? Others here are smarter on these rears than me and should reply too. RM

 

[Soonerfan41]

I have not taken the cover off the diff to see if it's a full or a mini spool. I'm just going off what the fellow told that I bought the car from.

 

[JBimmolate]

It's gotta be a mini spool if he's broken it andnot the stock axles. You can always have an 8.5 narrowed to the stock width and buy the 12 bolt axles and upgrade to 30 spline axles. Shouldn't be too bad on the wallet compared to a new 12 bolt (moser/currie). We do them quite often. You may also have to change the perches for the leaf springs. Lots of guys will just get the 71-81 camaro/firebird 8.5's since they are going to narrow it anyways since they are easier to find.

Miles