Ultimate A-500

89on35s said
I decided to send my transmission off to a reputable trans shop. He was recommended to me by a couple Mopar buddies that had him build race trannies for them as well as cruiser trannies. I decided to go with a stock type rebuild with a Transgo shift kit and use the stock converter at least for now. The shop owner seemed to know his stuff told me that the TC that would have come in this truck trans was a bit higher stall so I will see how it works once I get my gears and everything else set up. I do my own work, so if I need to yank the trans down to change the TC at some point then so be it, but I think it should be fine for how I intend to use the car. Now I need to deal with building myself a crossmember and getting the driveshaft shortened. I already have all the parts needed for 3/8 cooler lines and an external cooler as well as a couple pressure switches and a vacuum switch for the OD shifting.

The way I see it, if the centerline of the output shaft on the A-500 is the same height (floor to center of shaft) as it is currently on the A-998 that should keep the u-joints at compatible angles even though those angles will be slightly greater because of the shorter driveshaft. Any thoughts on this?

Cley

That should work out just fine, and is exactly what I went through with mine and it's just fine.

When I shortened my driveshaft for putting the A500 behind my Magnum motor I used pressure switches off the trans governor port for the OD and lockup shifts.
This 90 degree fitting coming off the port was keeping the trans tail from going up far enough, so I ended up dinging the floor board on the passengers side of the hump about a half inch right where the fitting needed to be.
It's between the seats anyway, so you can't tell any difference inside the car through the carpet.
Once I did that I modded my trans mount a bit to bring the tail up higher.
I could have used spacers between the trans and mount, but shortening the drop of the spool mount helped a bit on ground clearance. (my spool mount scraped speed bumps sometimes)

If you are going to use adjustable pressure switches, you might consider doing what I did.
I ran a section of cooler line up the back of the trans from the governor port to a bracket on the back of the intake where the two switches mount, so I don't have to get under the car for the shift speed adjustments.
When I was first looking into this I saw lots of people putting the switches on a bracket under some of the pan rail bolts.
Not only was I concerned about the switches getting damaged, but a guy would have to get under the car to make any adjustments. (No thanks):D
This way I can reach in there, pop the rubber caps off, and make my adjustments.