I know this is a strange request, but here goes. I am working in a group for a school project where we are building a small pulling tractor. We have decided to convert a TH-350 tranny from an Oldmobile, I know, forbidden words on this site, into a manual shifting tranny. We have rebuilt the trans ourselves and installed a TCIreverse shift pattern manual valve body in the trans. We removed the torque converter and replaced it with a TCI front pump drive. We have been trying to test the setup on our test stand but we are unable to start out in first gear, it starts in second. Actually, the driveshaft RPM drops slightly when we shift from 1 to 2, but 3 seems fine, but reverse is sluggish to engage. The trans seems to heat up quickly and we are reluctant to run it verylong so we do not burn it up. I have talked with TCI already and they say that we have setup and installed the valve body correctly, so we are thinking that the problem must be internal. We did not rebuild the clutch pistons, but before we dig into it again, I was hoping someone would have some ideas about what might be wrong with the trans, other than it's a GM product. Please let me know.

Thanks, Jackson