looking at both silversport and american transmissions for there 5 speed conversions you can also include Hanlon Motorsports as well-any problems from any of these-price one vs the other? One item is clutch pressure plate and last bellhousing-which way did you go and for me will not be adding a hydraulic setup.


Thank
Mark

 

I got mine from SST along with a McCloud pro street single disc set up. I could not be happier with this. I had an old Lakewood bell housing that came with the car & it was way out of parallel so I just got a cast one from summit & it was dead on needing no offsets at all. Good luck & you will love the 5 speed.... At least I sure do.
Darin

 

Chose SST. Picked up at SST and Jack Silver gave me a tour. Trans totally disassembled, case CNC machined, assembled and tested. Strong engineering team. Only regret is TKX didn’t exist then. Hated PP/clutch with kit. Yanked and installed Centerforce Dual Friction. Wonderful. I’d use them again. Larry

 

Curious if anyone has used the Hanlon C2 TKX?...... I " believe " they use the Performance Parts Warehouse bolt on piece.. My plan is to go to Carlisle this August for the swap meet then driver over to Hanlon and pickup a TKX, unless somebody can convince me to purchase one of the " machined " SST or American transmissions and that is IF they will sell a transmission only for my restomod frame, I don't need the entire kit..
The last TKX I purchased was dropped on its input shaft multiple times by UPS... I really don't want to get a 109 pd item delivered by them ever again....
PIcs of the box my last TKX came in

 

Wow, when I bought my 5-speed it came in a wooden box strapped down

 

It probably came on a freight truck, not UPS or FED EX.....

 

Mine came in a heavy duty cardboard box via UPS. It was undamaged, but I could see the potential for damage. I went with SST in 2018 and am very happy with my TKO600. I plan on adding a 5 speed to my new to me ‘64 coupe in the future and will go with a TKX from SST.

Remind me about the tranny input shaft. Is the spline count the same as a Muncie or will I need a new clutch?

 

New clutch disc required.. 26 spline if my memory is working OK....... The driveline yoke is 31 spline...

 

Another vote for SST and Jack. He made the transaction as painless as possible. TKO-600.

 

I bought a TKX from Hanlon a couple years ago. It's going in 65 GTO. Great people and very knowledgeable. I went to them (about an hour from my house) due to their service and no shipping.

 

Silversport: Fail

I'll put up a big post soon about my problems with my TKX install kit from SST in my '67 coupe and the engineering issues that SST glosses over or won't admit exist. The short answer is this- some mid-years have a driveshaft vibration with the TKX caused by the fact that SST had to lower the tranny 2" or so to fit in the tunnel and that screws up the u-joint angles. My front joint runs at 4.9° which is WAY more than Spicer wants (1-1.5°) and much more than SST wants (3°). Silversport is very poor with tech support on this because they know there is an engineering problem and don't want to address it. Zack from SST was supposed to call me back, and even after several additional calls from me in late January he never did return my call. Only after I called Tremec, and they called SST, did I hear from Shane Sullivan, who told me it was my pinion bearing being bad causing the vibration. (My pinion bearing is fine-the diff is tight, yokes are tight, and there's no leakage from anywhere. I have videos of this that I'll post soon. I think they use this for an "out" because they know how hard it is to change a pinion bearing and they know many guys will live with the shake rather than overhaul the diff, which probably doesn't need it anyway.) A new double Cardan driveshaft from a local driveline shop fixed my vibration problem at an additional $681 plus the huge headaches involved with diagnostics and time lost. In SST's installation instructions on the last page there's a short blurb about "some cars may experience a vibration, and a spacer at the pinion mount will fix it". This leads you down a rabbit hole of reading driveline angles, figuring the geometry, and making and trying various spacers at the diff and trans which once again doesn't fix the vibration.

Oh, yea, then there's the stiff shifter complaint that I still don't like even after doing the spring fix. On complaining to SST about this Chris Sitzmore says "It's an easy fix- pull a couple of bolts out and remove a spring". He's obviously never done this in a car and it's not an easy fix. It's obviously a known problem as they have a bulletin # MAA-00011 on how to do the fix. Why the H don't they tell you about this ahead of time or fix it themselves at the factory? I hear there's a revised shifter out that might correct the problem. If you read the other threads you'll see it takes 16lbs of pressure to move the shifter left and right in neutral and 9lbs after the "fix", which is still much stiffer than any factory car or truck I've ever driven. If there truly is a revised shifter that just reinforces what I'm saying about this being a prototype.

Oh, yea, then there's the exhaust bracket problem for undercar exhaust that they forgot to tell me about. When I called them they said I need the C3 exhaust bracket and charged me another $30 for a POS bracket that is 1/3 the strength of the original bracket. I ended up shelving the bracket they sent and modifying the original bracket, you'll see others have done the same thing.

Oh, yea, then there's the speedo cable- the Muncie has it on the right, the TKX on the left. If you set it up like SST wants, it does a nasty 90° turn just as it comes out of the tranny. I bought a little 90° cable gearbox to solve this issue.

Oh, yea, then there's the tranny mount issue- they sent a cheap Chinese mount with the kit and I elected to stay with the nice beefy OEM mount that was on the car. Little did I know that their support bracket is not compatible with the OEM style mount- you have to use the smaller mount or cut notches into the OEM mount so it doesn't hit on the bracket, effectively canceling out the existence of a rubber mount. It would have been nice of them to tell you that in the instruction book, or design the bracket so it's compatible with an OEM style mount. Others found this the hard way also.

Had I known about the grief I would encounter putting in the SST kit I would have NEVER done it. I'm now north of $6K into this, plus many sleepless nights trying to fix what SST didn't. It seems like they're selling a prototype and expecting the paying customer to dial it in.

I asked Shane about their return policy and he said "forget it" in a polite way a couple of weeks ago. It would have gone back in a red hot minute if they would have given me a refund. He said my best option is to sell it on Facebook Marketplace. Thanks, Shane.

Do I sound upset? You bet I am. This is one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made my entire life. I thought I did all of my research on this kit and have regretted it from the minute I installed it.

I'm an instructor. I'll be polite and not grade them with the "F" they deserve and give them a "D" to be nice. I'm being kinder to them than they were to me.....

 

I am not concerned about Hanlons, way too many good things said about them... I am more curious how the TKX for a C2 car they build works.... Anyone have one??

 

I bought a TKX 5-speed kit from SST about 11 years ago. No problems. I'd recommend them.
They still "remember" me. I've gone back to them a couple times over the years; to buy fluid or a different shifter, etc.
They seem to appreciate me as a customer.
I have no complaints.

 

Thanks for your detailed posts about this, Bruce. I had been planning to do a TKX swap to replace a non-original T10 that has some issues, but am now thinking I will swap in a good Muncie and call it done. I'd love to have the ratios of the Tremec box, but not any of the problems you've encountered, less yet all of them.

Live well,

SJW