Ok time for a good news update right? Tired of all the downtrodden crap news? Yea me too. Saturday we hit the ground running early, had plans later in the day to go watch some speedway racing so we had to have the trans in and running long before that. I need to back up a bit, I sent the converter back to my trans guy Tuesday and explained what I felt like the situation was. Short pads, long bolts, wrong cover, short snout, pulling out of the pump, etc. and he sent the converter to be rebuilt with more specific instructions and apparently more information on what my total combo is. Got everything back on Thursday and I did some backyard engineering to measure how far the converter would pull out to bolt up to the flexplate. My trans guy wanted 1/8”. I was slightly more than that still so I welded .060 shims on the pads of the converter and bolted everything together with new (perfect length) bolts. Then yanked the pan and gasket, replaced the filter, cleaned everything and slapped it all back together. Good news is neither the trans shop or the converter guy charged me for any of this, even gave me new fluid, filter, and gasket. Good to see that level of customer service and I think we got it figured out. Troy and I slammed it all in place and had it running about 1:00. We hopped in and put about 5 miles on it just to verify everything works the way it should. I now have all 4 forward gears with lock up and reverse. Win win win finally. We’ll see how long this lasts. I plan to put a bunch more miles on it in the near future driving it locally to and from work, just to develop some trust in it, then drive it to the duct tape drags in October and beat on it a little.