Teardown of our 1950 Chevy 3600 transmission reveals rusty gears - Hagerty Media

The straight-six from our 1950 Chevrolet is looking pretty awesome, but now the rest of the truck is playing catch up. Davin Reckow has been cracking away at the remaining projects keeping this three-quarter-ton pickup off the road. Not one to leave the viewers out of the greasy fun, Davin tackled rebuilding the transmission and inspecting the rear axle in the latest Redline Update.

The 215-cubic-inch straight-six was in surprisingly workable condition when Davin and crew dragged the Chevy out of a yard. It sputtered to life right away, but even with the engine rebuilt and turning under its own power the truck was a long way from driving.

“The rest of the driveline was grimy, but I didn’t see any reason that it would be in as rough shape inside as this transmission is,” Davin said when asked what he expected to find inside the gearbox. “But after I looked into this and tried to find a used gearset, these gearboxes are just prone to this rust forming inside.”

Each of the three gear pairings inside the transmission was heavily pitted and rusted. With only a slim chance of finding a better set of used gears, Davin elected to clean up the existing set the best he could and assemble them. His rationale was simple—this is not a restoration, and function is the goal. The damage to the gears may make them noisy when driving, and their useful life is significantly shorter than a clean set, but they will do the job for the time being.

Luckily, the rear end was a happier tale. Davin removed the rear cover and though the oil that came out was extremely dark, it was not nearly as contaminated as he expected.

“The gearset was in good-enough shape based on a visual inspection that I decided to seal it back up and fill it with fresh oil,” he said. “Didn’t see anything that needed more than that.”

Some fresh grease pumped into the rear wheel bearings, a bit of reassembly, and this vintage Chevy is one step closer to making parts runs. If you want to keep up with the progress on this truck and the rest of the happenings over in the Redline Rebuild garage, subscribe to the Hagerty YouTube channel to get notifications with each video that goes live.