1972 Caprice 2 dr

[mattbarr]

i have a 72 caprice that hass the 400 in it and it has a knocking or ratteling noise in it what could this be i was thinking about takina motor out of a 77 monte that i have thatz body is really rough

[Torch]

The motor out of the 77 will probably fit (you may have to swap some brackets) but you may not be happy with the lack of torque/horse power, horse power went seriously downhill in the late 70s.

[deesandvees]

I'd go with a big block for that car, got any pics?

[Torch]

Hadn't even thought of that, a 427 would be sweet in that car!

The knocking/rattling could be a number of things, pistons might be worn out, could be the crankshaft bearings, someone may have put the spark plug wires on wrong. I would start with a compression test and see what you find.

[mattbarr]

i dont have any pics right now but the motor out off the monte has had a lot of upgrades done to it its pretty strong in the monte do you think it will be any different in the caprice. like as by the weight of the car or anything

[mattbarr]

well the guy i had swith my motors isnt very smart and i had to get the drive shaft modified and made longer he told me a slightly too big length and it was a little to long but he ended up gettin it to fit would this cause any problems if its too tight of a fit.

[silicon212]

Originally Posted by mattbarr

well the guy i had swith my motors isnt very smart and i had to get the drive shaft modified and made longer he told me a slightly too big length and it was a little to long but he ended up gettin it to fit would this cause any problems if its too tight of a fit.

first things first how does the driveshaft need to be resized because the engine is independant of it did he replace the transmission or did he feel like cutting it for some other reason please let us know because both reading and writing sentences like this is extremely painful please let me know thanks

[mattbarr]

well i had him put the motor and tranny out of the 77 monte and the tranny was shorter than the one that came out of the caprice so i had to have 5 1/2 added to the driveshaft

[silicon212]

Why not just stick with the transmission that was in the Caprice?

['97ventureowner]

I had figured that was the issue while reading his posts. He probably went from a TH400 tranny to a TH350, and/or the aspect of using the setup from a mid size car('77 Monte Carlo) to a full size car ('72 Caprice).IIRC couldn't he have taken the end of the driveshaft( the part that goes into the tranny,) off of the '77 and used it on the driveshaft for the '72 ?That way he could've used the setup for the '77 into the '72 without having to modify it( add to it,) and possibly save a lot of money.

[silicon212]

As a former '72 Impala owner, I can offer this -

350 cars had TH350 transmissions in them. 400 and up cars had TH400 transmissions in them. The TH350 for these cars had the intermediate 9" long tailshaft, while the '77 TH350 had the short 6" shaft.

Since his car was most likely a TH400, he would have had to replace the yoke on the driveshaft to make it work with the TH350, but the lengths are still different - even a 'short shaft' TH400 is about 4.5" or so longer than a short TH350.

Personally, I would have stuck with the TH400 in this instance, to minimize the amount of work needed.

Plus - be careful about messing up the driveshaft on these - they use the double-spider Cardan CV joint at the back in lieu of a standard U-joint and can be hard to find.

[mattbarr]

well i drove the car to my house when i bought it and then when i went to move it to get the motor put it it wouldnt move i checked the tranny fluid and it was fine so i just had him switch everything... i was just wondering with it being such a tight fit would it mess anything up