Best PG Input Shaft?
 

I have a low HP Super Gas car with a TCI Powerglide and have been using the inexpensive hardened input shaft from TCI. The input shows a pretty good twist in the splines after 60-70 passes. I know that I can go to the Turbo shaft to help eliminate the problem, but don't know the cost of having Turbo splines installed in the converter. Also, I see that TCI offers a better shaft with the PG spline, and wondering if it might work for me. The material is Vasco 300X (or something?) and I see that other companies offer shafts made with 4340 material, and some are called "Hy-Tuff". Can anyone recommend the best input shaft that has the PG splines? Or do I need to bite the bullet and go with the Turbo shaft?

Re: Best PG Input Shaft?
 

Bite the bullet and get a turbo shaft set up. You can get parts from Carl at TSR (number is in the ND) and call Greg Slack and he can fix your converter. You will be glad that you did. Then with a low power SG car you can use the $200 dollar hard turbo shaft and not the high dollar PG shaft. Its really going to suck when it breaks in the final some where.

Re: Best PG Input Shaft?
 

Coan bushes their convertors so that you can use the turbo shaft without modifying the stator support on your existing pump. I'm sure you can have that done to yours. Then you can use the stronger turbo shaft. I had a TCI shaft twist too.....My coan PG shaft still looks good though. I have a good 8" convertor that is a PG spline so I still run the PG spline set up. I use the turbo spline when I switch to my 9" convertor or on my sons S/G S/ST car....It's kind of nice you just swap the shafts..... Someday though I will have all turbo setups. If you are going to invest any serious dollars....go the turbo route and be done.

Good Luck!

Ron
396V S/C

Re: Best PG Input Shaft?
 

I agree with James some years back I had a TCI PG input shaft in the car and and it snapped on the trans brake and pegged the tach! since it was under warranty I sent it back and they replaced it. I put the new one in the car raced it one week end pulled the converter and noted that the splines were twisting in it I sent it back too and they would not warrenty it they said that the rockwell hardness test was normal and "Your doing something wrong"
and you know what they were right! I was buying my parts from the wrong people! I purchased another input from a different manufacture and had no more problems.
Currently all of my stuff has been converted to the turbo splines.

Re: Best PG Input Shaft?
 

I ran P/G splined inputs for years and never broke one. In S/G type doorcars and in a dragster that ran in the high 7's.

I put another dragster together a few years ago and used a P/G splined input.....and it's a long story why I did that so I'll skip that....

I bought a good trans from a well known builder. He said I should be fine as I already had a P/G spline converter....I felt it always worked in the past so why not use it....

20-25 runs and I broke an input for the first time ever.....broke the splines right at the converter end on the starting line. I received a free replacement and it was definately a better input than the first one. Ran it with no issues after that. That was probably a Vasco Input.

I had my stuff upgraded since that event....had the converter redone and went to the turbo shaft and sold the p/g splined inputs I still had...

Converter was converted to spragless at the same time it was swapped to accept the Turbo input......If you were to just do the converter swap from PG to Turbo you'd spend probably $ 300 and have to buy an input for another $100+

Maybe the old inputs we had were better than the stuff out there today and everyone knows there is a lot of offshore steel being used in everything.......The input I broke did not appear to be very good material....