a518 swap question

Do you have a functioning transmission now? Are you willing to rebuild your A518 yourself? How about the welding? None of these are super big ticket items, especially if you can do a lot of it yourself, but cost's escalate quickly if you hire it out.

How much power will it need to handle? An A518 can be built to handle just about anything but having one more gear, they are more expensive than a 727. Custom converters cost, custom lockup converters cost even more. Here's a place to start doing price comparisons: http://smrtrans.tripod.com/smrtransmissionsintro/id10.html

The 200R4 has one thing going for it and one thing only; it's short. They cost about twice as much to beef up than a 700R4 (4L60) for similar power levels.

At $3000 the Gear vendors seems pretty spendy, but factor in the cost of building another transmission if you already have a built 727, and suddenly the cost difference isn't so much.

Keep a couple other thoughts in mind. If you have an 8 3/4 you could build another center section with either track or street gears for less than 1/3 of the cost of either option above. So ask yourself a couple questions. Will you drive your race car on the street enough to save $3000 in gas? Or, do you take your street car to the track enough that it's worth $3000 not to swap out your 3.23's for 4.10's occasionally.