Alternative to a dakota bellhousing

If you build the 318 right (hi pressure/ hi torque/ small solid lifter cam/ good heads),
Then you can use the A833, or even the Overdrive trans.
But With the od, you have to be extra careful in the engine build. and even more careful in selecting the starter gear. It's real easy to screw up second gear.
The Mopar trans ratio line-up looks like;
2.66-1.92-1.40-1.00 (the standard box)
3.09-1.92-1.40-1.00 (the Commando)
3.09-1.67-1.00-.73od ( the overdrive version)
I recommend the Commando and probably a 3.23 in the back, for up to a [email protected] cam, with plenty of compression. This will get you 65=2520 with 28" tires. With the Commando, the starter gear is 3.09 x 3.23 x24/25.5=9.39 normalized to a 25.5" tall tire.
If you can afford alloy heads, then you can run 185 psi, with whatever,lol.

In every case, IMO, second gear is where problems will show up. If your road gear is too big, you will not be able to backshift to first. If your road gear is too small, you will be forced to downshift, but then upshift right away. I gear second to run out of rpm at or near 60 mph; running a tad too high is better for me than not high enough. So this is gonna play heavily into your cam selection. which is gonna mess with your Compression ratio.
Bottom line,IMO, is to choose your transmission first, and then build your combo around it.
Lemmee show you;
With the Commando and 27" tires, 60 mph will be 5140 with 3.55s, in second gear. So I want my cam to be done about there or up to 300rpm later as the power lays down, on the backside of the curve. So that allows a powerpeak of 5140 less 300= 4840. So I might chose a cam of 216* to 220*@.050. That cam might have an advertised of 264* and an Ica of 59*.
With iron heads I can't run much over 160psi, say 156psi for 89 gas. Working the Wallace Calculator, my Scr then must be less than 9.4 @200ft elevation
See how those are all interconnected?
If you put a 268 type cam in there with an Ica of say 64* then at the same 9.4, your pressure will fall to 149psi, and your rpm of peak power will go up to about 5300, so now you need different rear gear to peak properly at 60mph.

Now, with alloy heads, In my combo, I still burn 87 gas at 185 psi; so,
with that Ica of 59*, I can now jump the Scr to 10.7, and have BigBlock type torque. (I actually run 10.95 on a 61* Ica, in an alloy-headed 367 cid) And yes, I still run the Commando.and with 3.55s.

At the other end of the scale is your minimum roadspeed without slipping the clutch.
You have to think about this cuz there will be many times that you will want to drive really slowly.
So sticking with 3.55s and 27s, If your slowest possible idle-speed is 700, then, your slowest speed with the regular A833 (2.66low) is 5.9 mph. But with the Commando (3.09 low) your slowest speed is 5.1. If you have chosen a smaller cam and retarded your timing, and can idle at 550, then your slowest speed becomes 4mph almost walkable.
A good streeter operating at WOT, will almost never need more than 2 gears, going from zero to 60. With more gears than that, you will just end up at 60 mph, way off the cam, and probably take longer to get there, so I see no point in more gears for this mode of operation.
But at at Part Throttle 4 gears are the minimum, and if you are looking for fuel economy, AND building for it; then now a 5 speed comes into it's own. But if you are geared wrong for it in the back, then it will not save you even one ounce of gas. You gotta consider the entire combo.
Having said all that;
The AX15 can be had with nice gears and progressive splits
3.83, 2.33, 1.44, 1.00, 0.79, for first through fifth, respectively.
The splits are .61-.62-.69-.79.. pretty nice.
Compare that to the Commando splits of .62-.73-.71.. Here you can see that the Commando has a tighter 2-3. Lets put some rear gears on these to see what your car is gonna see. I'm gonna try and get the Second gears lined up, cuz as far as I am concerned, this is all that counts. To hit 60 at ~5400, requires a road gear of 7.16; So that will be my target.
With the Commando that would take 3.73s on the money, here is what the roadgears look like;
11.53-7.16-5.22-3.73
Now lets do the Ax-15. She needs 3.07s in second or 4.97s in third. 3.07s are an in-between gear so you would chose between 2.94s and 3.23s in the Mopar line-up, depending on how torquey your engine is, ergo maxed out pressure with iron, or with alloys.
With iron heads select 3.23s and here we go with the AX-15;
12.37-7.53-4.65-3.23-2.55; W/alloys,choose 2.94s,and
11.26-6.85-4.23-2.94-2.32 ..And the Commando is
11.53-7.16-5.22-3.73
Oh-Wow can you see this?
The Commando has;
an excellent starter (11.53),
a perfect second gear (7.16),
a better third gear (5.22),
and a tighter 4th gear (3.73).
The only thing lacking is an overdrive.
What about the A833od?
Well it has a lousy second gear and an even lousier 1-2 split, but here goes;
To get the 7.16 second will require 4.30s out back so;
13.29-7.18-4.30-3.14od compared to the Commando;
11.53-7.16-5.22-3.73
As you can see the Commando is better in every way, except no overdrive. (13.29 starter is way too low on the street for any V8. I ran that for a couple of weeks one summer, and it got very old in a very short time.) A good starter gear for most small V8s will be from 11 to 10, maybe even less if a slow roadspeed is not required..


But here's the thing; in every one of my examples I set them up for how I like to drive, with a quick zero to 60 mph. With the Commando, this takes care of every other situation as well.
But you might not care about zero to 60, so that would then require an entirely new look-see.