Thanks Jeff.
Received both quotes this morning. They look good, will review them after I have my other quotes in to compare with.

Cheers, Brew

Well, finally pulled the trigger. One T-56 Magnum is heading my way! Really looking forward to this change. Bet this will increase the amount of miles that get put on the car now.

I'm curious who you bought from and why. I'm considering the same conversion. PM is fine if you dont want to make public. Your experience would be very helpful!

John

Hey John,

I went with Hurst Drivelines. I compared the pricing and components in the kit and pm'ed a few people who had purchased kits. Honestly they both were on par with each other. To me it seems that I could have safely gone with either Silver Sport or Hurst Drivelines and had received the proper trans and kit parts and service at a fair price.

Hurst won me because I am an old fart and know they have been around as long as I can remember. Knowing that made me feel more secure in dolling out my hard earned cash. However part of me really wanted to give Silver Sport the business, they seem like a decent company and I want them to succeed. It is hard to get going and I respect that.

To comment on my experience with Hurst. It has been very good. They got me exactly what I wanted and everything looks wonderful. Due to my car now getting a completely new rear suspension it is on hold so I can't comment on performance yet. That of course is mostly up to the people at Tremec building the transmission well...pretty safe bet.

Hope this helps your decision.

Cheers, Brew

Hey John - I still have that bell housing setup ready for you. Pick up a T-56 and be done with it..... I'm in the garage all weekend if you want to come by and check out the parts.

Steve

Quick follow up - after comparing prices and quality of components between Hurst and SST, I purchased a TKO-600 from SST to replace the 700R4 in my Camaro. Equalizing the "optional" upgrades from Hurst versus the "standard" parts from SST, the pricing was so close that my decision was not based on price, but on completeness of the kit. With Hurst I would have had to buy a few things, with SST is was all from one vendor. So if I had any problems, it would have been one phone call to SST.

My install is not quite complete, I have a few loose ends to finish up before I can say how well the new transmission works. Other than a couple very minor issues, the kit was complete and well thought out. I've had to make no calls to SST so far...

...more to come after a road test!

Final follow up to my previous...

Love my new TKO-600 5 speed! After about 80 miles on the car I don't know why I labored so hard over making the decision to jettison the 700R4 and install a manual. My pal said it best last night after a short ride - "The car feels alive now! With the automatic is was cool to look at, but otherwise just ho-hum to ride in".

As far as the Silver Sport kit, no complaints. There were things to figure out (as with just about any aftermarket kit), and two minor things that could have been better - I ended up using the crossmember that I built for my 700R4. It was dimensionally equivalent as far as mounting points go, but the SST sourced crossmember did not provide enough clearance for my exhaust. Secondly, the assembled speedo cable did not allow a factory GM firewall bushing to be used since it needs to slip over the end of an unterminated cable housing. That may be an ongoing thing since after splitting the factory bushing to fit over the cable, its not as secure sealing the hole in the firewall. Both very minor, and considering the magnitude of problems that could be created with this sort of swap, I'd say SST did a great job on quality and completeness.

I've got a few more things to tweak, as always on a project like this. But for first time since the car hit the road over a year ago I'm super fired up to drive it and finish the few remaining details!

Thanks SST!