Well, I got the transmission in and took it for a test drive. There's definitely a little bit of air still in the clutch line, as I had to pump the pedal a couple times, but it drives really quite nicely. There's still a couple little things I need to do to get it sorted, like screwing in the shifter boots and putting the exhaust pipes back on, but I'm absolutely in love with it. As someone pretty new to driving stick, as long as the clutch pedal has pressure it's shockingly easy. I'll write up more thoughts later, but I'm extremely satisfied with the support that Ben Thompson at Simply Performance provided throughout the project. If you can find a Getrag 265 or 290 and don't want to do a lot of custom work, I'd highly recommend going with them for a manual swap. If I had to do it over, I would definitely go with the left hand drive pedal box, though. I think I'm probably going to keep the 2.88 rear end for the foreseeable future, and just work on getting everything sorted out and working properly.

 

When you get the exhaust on and the boots, etc installed, I'd like to know how much gear whine you have. I have a fair amount in 1st thru 3rd, less in 4th, and 5th is OK with my 290.

 

So, I've got a bit of a hiccup -- the gauge cluster has decided to stop working. I think a wire might have been affected in the region behind the radio when I was putting the center console back in. Is there a good diagram of where the wire runs for the instrument cluster go, or some photographs? I'm assuming I'm probably going to have to pull the instrument cluster to sort it out.

 

I've got a little whine in first, but other than that it's nice and quiet. There's an appalling rattle when I turn right from either the tunnel cover or one of the sheet metal heat shields, but that should be fixable.

 

What gear oil are you using in the 290? I've seen both ATF and synchromesh oil recommended. I'm currently using synchromesh oil, and I'm wondering if a change to ATF might quiet things down.

Jon