life out of a 3850?

twinmega06

twinmega06

master debater
Joined
Dec 8, 2007
Messages
211
im runnin a south bend 3850 sprung hub that we put in this spring and was wonderin about how long this thing will go before it needs rebuilt. i sledpull an average of 20 pulls a year and the truck tows a trailer almost everyday locally :thankyou2:
 
It matters how much you feather it coming out of the hole. Just feather it long enough to get the sled moving & let out. At 20 pulls a year, I'd say 3 years, but I talked to a guy at Greene county who said that he got 98 pulls out of a 3850.....could have been lying, but sounded sincere.
 
A friend of mine had one that lasted 3 hooks, but here's the deal: the final pull that did it in was a gravel track, and he tried 5th low. He did fine, but when he stopped at the end, he took it out of gear and let the pedal back out. When he pushed the pedal back in there was some nasty sounds and bad feeling to it. Had to be trailered home because we thought it was coming apart.

Took it all apart, and the clutch facings had "welded" to the floater and flywheel, then when the pedal was depressed it ripped big chunks out of the friction material. Ugly!

SBC totally took care of him. They said that in an effort to make the clutch more streetable, the plates have a very slight taper ground to them (and of course this line of contact on the outside was where the material had welded). SBC then changed it for sledpulling by grinding the plates dead flat. Further, they warned him that when running a big gear, at the end, depress the pedal and keep it depressed just to let everything cool off a bit. Feather it into reverse, then feather it forward and then let the pedal out.

He's had a bunch of hooks since then with zero issues and it feels great.

Hope this helps.
 
about my 4th pull into this season we went to a local pull where there was about 45 local trucks with just a chip that were all ''bad trucks'' there were about 3 or 4 trucks there that had more than just programming done and i was at about 600 hp at the time and wanted to pull the sled thru the gate and i always pull in 4th low with 3.73 gear w 37,s and i was the last one to go and decided to try 5th low , the hook felt good but at the gate the truck bogged down and died and when i started it back it was stuck in gear and wouldnt disengage . the next day i slipped it in 4th gear till it brok loose and i talkd to peter and he said it welded itself together and it would slip itself loose and it worked and has been fine since . peter said u need 800 to 900 hp to go to that high of a gear
 
Well i broke mine in for 500 easy miles. Did 2 burnouts within about the next 500 miles. One more burnout and cya. Thats all she wrote for that sprung hub. Discs were ruined somehow
 
2Tone12V said:
Well i broke mine in for 500 easy miles. Did 2 burnouts within about the next 500 miles. One more burnout and cya. Thats all she wrote for that sprung hub. Discs were ruined somehow
Click to expand...
what are u running now?
 
I have 25 hooks on my Iron Giant and it is ready for a rebuild. However most of the time I slip it out too long...My next clutch should last 35 hooks or better.

For those that only get 3-6 hooks out of a DD I would question their driving abilities.
 
JW3 said:
I have 25 hooks on my Iron Giant and it is ready for a rebuild. However most of the time I slip it out too long...My next clutch should last 35 hooks or better.

For those that only get 3-6 hooks out of a DD I would question their driving abilities.
Click to expand...

:drive:
Brandon
 
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