Gas, tires, oil.

I use my ‘55 Candian Pontiac to get to work when I don’t take my sportster (basically, rainy days or when I need to haul stuff). The car came with a 3 speed on the column (3 on the tree) manual transmission, and 1st gear is not syncronized. The rear axle ratio is at least 3.55 or numerically higher, so the poor old 283 was really winding up at 65-70 mph. And I often get caught in several miles of stop and go backups on the highway. So out came the old trans ( I’m getting some help from my middle kid, 2 yrs. old):

But what to put back in? An overdrive auto would be nice, but I wanted to be able to do the swap over a weekend, and I didn’t want to spend too much money. To put in an auto, I would have to put in side motor mounts and a trans crossmember. If I were to do that, I would get the mounts that move the motor ahead 3/4″ so an HEI distributor can be used. That would mean getting a new 6-cylinder mount radiator for fan clearance. And if I am going to pull the motor, I might as well assemble the new motor for the car. So things would snowball (these are all things I want to do eventually, just not right now).
The 5 and 6 speed transmissions that come the ’80s and up camaros and such would be nice, but pricey. And, they use a 26 spine clutch, so I’d have to switch mine (10 spine) out, a real pain with a front motor mount and bellhousing ears. And some use a hydralic clutch.
I had pretty much made up my mind to get an overdrive unit from a ’50s-’60s GM car and pair it up with a 3 speed manual that had syncros in 1st. I was searching ebay for one, when I found an NP833 transmission out of an ’80s 1/2 ton chevy pickup. Its an aluminum case 4 speed with 4th being overdrive. A slightly different version was used in ’60s and early ’70s mopars behind some high horse motors (hemis and 440s). The Chevy version has a 10 spline input and the output is the same as either the 350 or 400 turbo (mine was the 350 size). It is the same length as my old 3 speed and came with a floor shifter. The only problem was that the front bearing retainer, that also centers the trans in the bellhousing, was the larger truck size. Some chevy pickups use a bellhousing with a 5 1/8″ opening, instead of the 4 11/16″ opening in the cars. I’ll explain how I got around that problem next time.