Got your attention. Picked up a box of free books from CL. Check out the available gear ratio on the 300 ! I wonder what the purpose of such gearing was ? Ideas ?
300 used the same rear axle as other Chryslers and they offered various rear axle ratios. The lowest might be meant for a station wagon towing a trailer. Could also be used for drag racing. On Daytona Beach cars often had a higher top speed with a lower (higher numerical) rear gear because of the drag of the wet sand and dense sea level air. The same car might do better at Bonneville with a higher gear. 6.17 sounds awfully low. If it is a misprint a check of factory literature might prove it.
For oval track racing back in the time when NASCAR said if it ain't in the parts catalog you can't run it. I have run as high number as 8.41:1 on flat quarter mile by using a quick change and a 4.86:1 R&P.
We used to use a pretty deep gear on the short track cars even into the '70s when I was playing around with friends cars. I don't recall going as deep as that but I do know we ran a street stock duster with a 5.9 gear on the local 1/8 mile track (it came out of a truck).
Carl Keikhaefer of Mercury outboard motor fame, ran a team of Chrysler 300s in NASCAR and was very successful. Maybe he needed that ratio for the shorter dirt tracks of the time. Stock cars were limited to factory made parts and equipment but the factories were pretty accommodating to racers.
"Could get" is the key, As others said, that made it legal Nascar if you wanted to run that gear on a short track.
Ran a 10.38 (or something around that) in a midget when we ran indoors. You geared for the track. Chrysler was just playing by Nascar/Usac's rule book.
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