Have Y'all Seen This One Yet? '67 Caprice Wagon

The Muncie HD three speed was introduced with the 1970 model year. Interestingly, Pontiac, Buick, and Olds used the For... er, DEARBORN top loader HD three speed trans. The Muncie replaced the Dearborn in the A-body cars in 1970, but the full size cars used the Ford trans through 1970 (for the handful of full size cars built with a manual trans that year).

 

Supposedly, that was a deal arranged, because a strike at GM's supplier crippled delivery. Which is okay, as long as technical specs are met. I wouldn't have purchased a GM with a Ford automatic, though, unless they copied the THM 400 to detail

 

The Dearborn 3 speed is probably the best manual transmission made in that era. I owned a car with it and it was bulletproof. It also was like having a TH350\400 gear spread, well rounded for the car and the minimal amount of shifting (always felt like you were constantly having to shift the 4 speeds).

Personally I never understood why they went with the low-po Saginaw 3 speed in this era, I would think from a warranty and parts stock perspective that having the heavier duty transmission would have paid for itself. Not that I have access to any of the info to say one way or the other, it probably amounted to $0.05/car difference which we all know was enough for GM to go with the poorer designs in that era.

That said... a 3 on the tree '67 is definitely unique.

 

Exactly.
That's what i was trying to explain in my post in the other thread, but the idea of a 'mandatory option' seems a bit difficult for some. Hey - I didn't make it up.

It makes perfect sense to me. Chevy priced optional engines separate from optional transmissions back then. If you say, Why didn't they just include the price of the heavy-duty manual 3-speed in with the price of the 396?", then you run into a pricing problem when somebody wants a 396 with a Turbo Hydra-Matic. Are they now paying for 2 transmissions? I think it's just the way they did it to keep everything as simple as possible for the ordering process.

This same thing happens in other areas of the order form, like when you ordered front disc brakes on this very same vehicle. You also had to order power brakes. You can have power brakes. You can have power disc brakes. But you can's have disc brakes.

 

Good explanation.

Also, interesting about the Disc Brakes on a '67 back then. But not unheard of on some other applications. My '72 C-1o has Factory "Manual" Front Disc Brakes. Some people I talk to tell me that they never heard of it. The trucks stops great by the way.

 

I'm not following what was so "interesting" about disk brakes in 1967. That's the first year that GM offered them pretty much across the board (along with dual circuit master cylinders).

 

I believe you are taking "interesting" a little too seriously. It was just a word to start the conversation and also to indicate that in '67, Passenger Cars Manual Disc Brakes were not available, but in '72 (probably '71 as well) they were available in Trucks.

 

Oldsmobile offered manual disk brakes on the W-30 and W-31 cars in 1970-72 as the performance cams didn't produce enough vacuum for the power booster. My 70 W-30 stops just fine.

 

Interesting.

The Brakes on my truck just so happened to come that way, but I like them. So much so, that I would have ordered it that way, if I bought it new.