Hey Hank,

Yeah I'm finally starting this project that i talked to you about several years back. The Ford tail didn't eliminate the need to shorten the driveshaft, but it does eliminate having to move the console. I also get a deeper overdrive. I understand the angle is in the 3rd gen bell housing, but when installed straight up, the mount is then canted. This nearly eliminates that. Plus it was fun learning what it would take to build this combination. I got a lot of info and support from Paul Cangialosi from 5speeds.com.

You're going to get the canned response on the weakness of the T5. My favorite is that "GM wouldn't even put it behind the 350 due to torque limits". The truth is GM didn't out it behind the 350 due to emissions. You could still get it behind the 350 in Canada with the same torque motor. The other is people thinking that the torque rating means anything above it will kill it like a red line. The torque rating is a durability rating. At that torque rating the trans will survive the development duty cycle (x amount of customer miles). Truth is you can run higher than the rating and have no issues, or you can have failure below the rating. The number one failure on the t5 is third gear. That's not a torque issue, it's a deflection issue. The cluster gear support is stamped steel and can flex over time and under load. This coupled with mainshaft flex (since 3rd gear is in the middle) creates a mesh issue and results in failure. The billet support helps eliminate some of that. It's never going to be as strong as a TKO. But isn't nearly as expensive. Like i said, i have a net $50 into this with a fresh rebuild (thankfully the Ford box had new blocking rings). If i decide i want to beat in this trans, i could upgrade to the g-force or astro performance gears for half the price of the TKO.