Anybody use or is using a Muncie 4 speed? my brother had an 82 Camaro 305 4-speed and he ran a 15.50 stock with slicks. and it would seem like an ideal transmission to put in. he also had an 82 firebird with a 4-speed. any idea's on this, i know these transmissions can handle some power because they came in all the older high HP cars.....but correct me if im wrong and slap me. but i just cant afford a 6-speed and i dont wanna pop off every T-5 i come across.

 

if you can't aford a 6 speed you can't aford a m22. if you have a m322 sell it to someone that needs it and buy a 6 speed. tell me about the clutch linkage and torque arm, after you have that worked out the rest ought to be easy.

 

82 cars didn't come with Muncie transmissions at all, since the last year of the Muncie I believe was 1973.

The "rock crusher" Muncie was the M-22. There never were many of those in the world, and there's fewer now than there used to be. I doubt you'd find one lying around anywhere just waiting for you to relieve an unsuspecting owner of for little enough money to make it cheaper than a T-56.

No Muncie ever came with the torque arm mount to fit these cars, or the rotated transmission mount boss; and there's no shifter made for it. Those aren't insurmountable obstacles, but they're not exactly trivial either, especially not if you want to avoid sodomizing the car to get it in there.

A few 82s came with Warner T-10s. That's a better transmission by far than a Muncie. If you really want a 4-speed, that'd be the one to find. But they are few and far between; the vast majority of 4-spd 82s came with a Saginaw, which is junk. It's a 6-cyl truck / grocery cart box, not a high-perf one.

15.50 on slicks isn't exactly a shining beacon of excellence for one of these cars either, considering that the very next year, the L69 5-speed cars were doing near a 15 flat on street tires. I would not consider that time on some brand of 4-speed to be an inducement to go through the torture of retrofitting some other kind of 4-speed into your car. The 4-speed didn't do much for that car's time one way or the other.

What makes you think you could get a M-22 installed and operating cheaper than a 6-speed?

Would you like to know how many Muncies I've torn up, even with a 283? Not to mention the number of them that my late little brother and I destroyed with big blocks.... You've obviously never owned one, that much I can tell. They're not all that stout of a transmission.

I'd suggest that you learn to drive your T-5 gently, and in the meantime save up your $$$ for a 94-97 T-56. That's really the better way to go.

 

They made 3 speed HD muncies past 73. I think they even had some production HD M3's to 86 but thats in trucks so.......

Ive seen a Munice M21 with tq arm holes but thats isnt a rock crusher so. I think a T5 is fine I have no complaints, A t56 would even be better still waiting for that pick n pull gem. Theres nothing real special about the M22 worth the hassle of install, I had one just waiting to install when I had my camaro but hacking up my camaro for a hacked install with a crappy aftermarket lever shifter the need adjustment every week isnt my idea of worth while.

 

RB-first of all im 18 and i really dont know anything about the 4 speeds so i dont know why you should make any kind of remarks twards my knowledge to be honest and you already notice that i know NOTHING about the 4-speeds. and the 15.50 is just there i wasnt comparing like "woah it ran a 15.50 that must be a good tranny" no where near was i refering to that. all i was saying is the cars were 4 speed standard and i just threw the time in there for no reason. i say muncie then rock crusher but i wasnt sure if anything and after the post i realized about the torque arm then i was like oh Sh.....iot. but, i was just looking for a more inexpensive alternative to the T-56 and when isaid "popping T-5's" i havnt destroyed one yet i was just looking out for the future. but thanks for the info on the T-10 but like you said i probably wont be able to find one. is there any specific identifying marks? or do all the 4-speed 82's come with them? and what about 83? i know they wernt 5-speeds.....well at least i saw something that said they wernt. who knows.....not me. thanks for the help i just went and found a T-10 on e-bay. 325 they want for it. but no bell housing or linkage, its out of an 82 firebird. what kind of bellhousing would i be using and for the clutch isnt it non hydraulic. and id have to get shift linkage unless he has it. were you saying that the T-10 is better than the muncie so is it better as in holding the power better than the T-5?

 

The Muncie was discontinued in about 1973. There was never a Muncie in one of these cars. None ever came with torque arm holes. If you saw a transmission with an aluminum case (Saginaws are cast iron) that had torque arm provisions, it was a Warner.

To identify 4-speeds, look first at the location of the reverse shifter shaft. If it goes into the case, it's a Saginaw; and those are also cast iron, where most other 4-speeds are aluminum. If the reverse shifter shaft goes into the extension housing, it's either a Muncie or a Warner T-10. To tell those apart, look at the shape of the cover; the Muncie has a square cover with the bolts across the bottom in a straight line except for the middle one, but the Warner cover is rounded across the bottom. Both will have a bunch of bolt holes on the extension housing for a shifter to mount to, but those ar enot torque arm mounts. To identify the Warner that was used in the 82 cars, look for the trans mount boss to be rotated 18 degrees with respect to the bell housing bolt pattern.

83 V8 cars came with 5-speeds. I've heard of 4-cyl cars that still had 4-speeds (Saginaws), but since I know absolutely nothing about 4-cyl cars except to avoid them, I can't confirm that.

I don't intend to be insulting, don't take it that way; on the other hand, misinformation and old-timer's warped legends about how fast and powerful their friends' cars were (people who actually had them rarely say stuff like that) are usually just a bunch of monkey-spank. Those cars from back in the 60s weren't as powerful as many people nowadays would like to think. They changed the horsepower rating method in 1971, from pure blue-sky to something you could measure on a dyno; and when they did that, all of a sudden all of those motors lost about 30% of their HP or more, with no changes whatsoever to their parts. So don't think that a "375 HP 327" for example would run with what we would call a "375 HP" motor today' it probably would be called about a 275 HP motor today.

T-5s can last pretty well if driven properly: no 5000 RPM clutch dumps on slicks, and no speed shifting. I wouldn't be too worried about it. One lived for many, many thousands of miles behind my 400, once I realized it was never going to withstand the abuse that a 4-speed will, and adjusted my driving technique accordingly.

You'd definitely need the BH and linkage to use that 82 trans. $350 isn't a bad price, if it's really a T-10.

 

i dont plan on dumping the clutch at 5k or speed shifting, i just figured they brake because of putting it in gear then hammering down, but i have an extra 5-speed sitting on my floor that i bought from a guy real cheap. well here's the e-bay site for that tranny http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=34208
the guy sent me an e-mail saying he doesnt have the linkage but he does have the bell housing for 100 bucks for the 11" clutch and 50 bucks for the 10 1/2. i dont know tho, i just want to make sure its not gonna brake at the track, because where im from the closest place to a drag strip is in canada. and i deffinately dont wanna brake down up there.

 

OBTW, one other identifying mark to distinguish between a Muncie and a T-10.... the Muncie side cover is aluminum, but the Warner side cover is cast iron.

I haven't worked on any 4-speeds for about 15 years or so, and haven't owned any cars with any of them for about 20 now; the one that I traded in to buy this 83 car (a 79 Z28 4-speed) was my last 4-speed car. My late little bro and I used to do a quite lively business rebuilding them back in the 70s and early 80s though. I'd say between the 2 of us we probably built about 50 or 60 of them. I somehow ended up with more T-10 business, and he got more Muncies in; but we both did plenty of each. I used to have a large stash of used Muncie and T-10 stuff, but I got rid of it all about 5 or 6 years ago, having really no further use for it. I've had cars with both of them at various times. In my experience the T-10 was more durable than the Muncie by far; but the Muncies always seemed to shift better.

 

ok i see now, itll probably be a waist of my time to do all that work for the 4-speed, ill probably just work with the 2 T-5's that i got while saving some money for a 6-speed even tho the cost of those are around 2,000 total right? with everything ill need.