anyone have experience with an ax15 behind a 318? I can't afford $500+ for a trans right now and there isn't a single 4wd nv3500 at any u pull it near me. I won't be beating on it too hard, but I'm worried that the ax15 won't handle a v8, 33s, and only 3.55 gears.

 

From what I can read on the 'net, the ax15 is a medium duty trannie for V6 engines (you knew that.) I don't think I'd do it.

Manual trannies aren't that tough to clean up and rebuild. You don't say what's wrong with the NV3500, but if it's just syncros and bearings, I say do it yourself. I have no experience with this particular manual transmission, but have done others going way back to the early 70's. Caged bearings make it easy (I did a t10 once and lost a bunch of needle bearings) and syncros aren't tough as long as you pay attention, take pics, and don't mix up parts.

My experience on Japanese style transmissions has been that the bearings go first--so that getting the trannie into 3rd, 4th, & 5th and keeping it in gear gets real difficult. The Japanese trannies I've worked on were just so easy to fix, I wouldn't hesitate to try to fix an NV3500

You are way ahead by not changing to something that isn't meant for your truck, btw. Inevitably, things don't come out quite right, so that transfer cases, for example, don't work well.

 

Problem Is I have a 46rh that is completely unusable until it gets a rebuild. I was hoping the v6 trans would at least get me back on the road until I find an nv4500 for under a grand