[whateverpratt]

So I was tired of my '63 screaming down the highway at 55-60 mph, and I wanted to do something about it. This is what I did, but first, some background.

I bought this truck for $650 13 years ago. The po paid to have it towed to my place because he said the clutch was bad. It turns out it was not adjusted correctly, and after adjusting the rod from the z bar to the clutch fork, it was fine.
The truck came with a 230 and a 3 speed. Unfortunately the po had done away with the column shift and put a floor shifter in it. I returned the shifter to the correct location after a season, and I was happy with it. However, the transmission kept jumping out of third gear no matter how I adjusted the shift linkage. I tried two other three speeds and ran into the same problem, so I decided it was time for a change.
I had a spare sm420 laying around, and I decided it was time that my little rusted out 1/2 ton got a granny gear four speed. Installation was no problem, and I had a two piece driveshaft out of a long bed that I was able to get shortened for $80 that worked quite nicely. Life was good. I now had a granny gear and reverse that were absolutely awesome. If you let the clutch out slowly, the truck would just start crawling away, and third didn't pop out of gear at all. I was sad to lose the column shift, but this was the right decision.
The sm420 served me well for many years. Unfortunately, my little 6 doesn't like driving over 60 mph on the highway, so I decided that an overdrive was in order.

Now the time has come for me to change out the sm420 for the nv4500. I chose the nv4500 over the t5 because of the granny gear (not as good as the sm420, but still a granny) and the strength (not that I will ever test it with my little 230). I am blessed to work at a post-secondary educational institution, so I had a solid 3 weeks during Christmas to undertake my project.

I started out by visiting every junkyard in the 2 counties near where I lived. I found some horrible news. Now I had visited these junkyards about 12 or 13 years ago when I was younger and searching for old cars and trucks. I had found some pretty cool yards that had some neat vehicles. What I found was that shortly after I had searched out these yards, the price of scrap went through the roof, so what did everyone do? They crushed everything. It was difficult for me to find a sbc qjet intake for my younger brother. It was sad to go to the yards that had had so much good junk and see them bare.
That aside, my second day of searching brought me to a yard that had an NV4500. It shifted good, and the owner asked me if I was the guy who just called about it. He wanted $450 for it. He said someone else was coming to pick it up, and if I wanted it, I could have it if I gave him cash before the other guy. I was pretty stoked about finding the trans due to the sad state of the local salvage yards, so I told him I would come back later that afternoon and pick it up. I came back and bought it from him. The deal sucked in hind sight. He charged me a $35 core charge (really?). I wasn't going to bring him my old sm420. Then he charged me tax on top of that (that really surprised me knowing how most junkyards are), so it ended up costing a little over $500 with no shifter or bellhousing. He got me with the story about the other guy coming to pick it up. When I asked him about an intake for my little brother he pulled just about the same stunt. He liked to make you think that you couldn't come back for it later and that it would be gone. This tactic worked good for him and bad for me as I later found two other NV4500's (both with shifters, one with the bellhousing) for $425 each. Live and learn. Here's the transmission after I picked it up.