The transmission was completely gone through and painted. I bought some new mounts for the tranny and crossmember. I really want to put in a 3 speed TH350, but that will come a little later. Update April 2003 Well since I started this page, I have bought a TH350 and that too has been gone through and a shift kit installed. I am going to keep the original look of the column shifter, but I needed to modify it from a 2 speed to a 3 speed. There is a company that specializes in making conversion kits to change 2 speed shifters, column or console, into 3 & 4 speed. The company is called Shift Works and they have a great product and support staff to assist you in the conversion. This will definately make my car a lot more responsive and stronger running.
For an exhaust system I choose to use a 2 1/2 inch mandrel bent system from Flowmaster. I opted for a set of 14 inch Dynomax Super Turbo mufflers over the Flowmaster series mufflers for a little quieter ride. Beside a quiter ride, the Dynomax mufflers flow much better than the Flowmasters, this is according Tom Hand's Silent Power CD for exhaust system. Tom Hand has a CD called Silent Power that offers information and sound clips of various mufflers to help you in choosing a muffler. You can get the CD though Perfomance Years
I wanted to stay with the factory exhaust manifolds and no one had mandrel bent pipes that would go from 2 to 2 1/2inch, so I had a little work to adapt my stock manifolds to the 2 1/2 inch pipe.
I used the end pieces of the stock down pipes for their flared ends and welded a 2 1/2" to 2" reducer to them. I then used a 90 degree 2 1/2" mandrel bent elbow to come out of the reducer to get me back to the collector pipes. I needed about a 10" piece of 2 1/2" pipe stretched on both ends to join the down pipes to the exhaust. Can't wait to hear it run.
