Alright guys. Bear with my potential exuberance as it's 3AM and I'm a little teed off at the fact I just R&R my transmission on jackstands for absolutely nothing. With that being said...

I got a 9.5" Street Edge converter from a friend. He says he really didn't use it all that much and that I could have it as payment for helping with the t5 swap into his IROC.

Lowered the transmission out of my car, tapped in a new Timken seal, filled the torque converter with fluid and attempted install. Put the converter on the input shaft and rotated it to seat it. Click, Clack and Clunk. Something to the naked eye seemed just a tad bit off, but I figured maybe it was eyes playing tricks on me and attempted to mate the transmission back to the block. The converter bottoms against the flexplate with still about 1/4" clearance between the block and bellhousing. No, this isn't right. Looked up and noted about 1/2" of the snout that was still protruding beyond the seal. Lowered the transmission and rolled it back and attempted to reseat it. Took it on/off a good 4 times with no change. I tried everything. Spun the converter around and around while pushing on it at all sorts of different points around it's radius. Won't seat any further. I even drug my 12" TSI back outside and test fitted it and it fully seated on the first try.

Something I noticed was that even with the converter on the input shaft as far it would go I was still about to wobble it around a small amount.

Any advice here? Is something jacked up with this converter, or did I do something wrong? Maybe there's a possibility this isn't even the right converter for a 700?

I'm going to ship it off to edge and have them inspect it and give their 2 cents, but can anyone possibly shed some light on what's going on?

I did put both converters flat on the ground and laid a straight edge across the top of the snouts. Both seem to be level with each other. If I hold the edge converter in my hands and rotate it around you can feel something shifting around inside it a small amount. Is this normal? What gives?

 

Had this exact same issue with a different kind of converter on my former V6 Bird, haven't solved it at the time, but here's some ideas:
- Count the teeth on your transmission's input shaft and compare the number with the teeth inside the converter. There ARE different versions, depending on transmission build dates.
- I assume your converter has a lockup clutch inside it. My thoughts were that the input shaft didn't go into it. Why? You don't have much fluid in the converter, so the clutch plate may be bottoming out in the converter, therefore not centering in on the spline.

 

27 vs 30 spline perhaps.

 

I was thinking that. I have a later year 700 that is SUPPOSED to have a 30 spline input, but I will check into it. Last night at 2:30 AM I was only concerned with shower and sleep.