question number 1: what's a good price on one? i've got a lead on one for $450, and i'm wondering if this is a decent deal.

and question number 2: i've got a c-4 in my car right now, if i do swap out for the 4 speed, is that going to give me better highway cruising performance (not be at 3000 rpm at 65 mph) or should i just hold out until i can scrape together the money for a t5? thanks in advance.

 

Best bet is hold out for a T5 . The top loader will not give you better fuel mileage . $450 is a good deal if the trans is in good working order though but pull cover and look at brass lock rings and gear teeth if you go this route .

ADD you can get a T5 for about $300 for a WC and the cable shift will be easier to aquire then linkage .

 

Wish I could find a t5 around here for 300$:P

 

Search Craigslist and Ebay.

 

Top loaders suck too. I sold mine for 600 with a Hurst shifter.
T-5 is the way.
The 4 speed is too archaic and there is way too much travel in the shifter.

 

I love my toploader. They work great for 40 year old trannys and they hold power pretty well, at least mine is working well at 460hp and 7000rpm. With that kinda of performance, what more do you want? Some may say I want a fifth gear...well ok.

You are not going to get much better highway fuel economy, if any, going to a toploader from a C4/C6 b/c both trannys have the same ratio top gear 1:1 is all you are going to find in c4s, c6s, fmxs, and toploaders. If you want OD, you need to go with something else. I hate the AOD, but it is about your only option for OD in an auto. T5 is an option if you want to convert to a cable clutch, etc. There are also a few OD toploaders out there, but they are rare. You may can convert a regular toploader over to a OD, but I do not know the specifics. Either way, converting an auto car to a manual car is going to require a little more knowledge and/or money than doing a C4/C6 to AOD conversion. I would recommend against it, but if you want OD, that is the way I would go. Selling an auto to manual conversion car is going to be hard if the buy knows what they are looking at.

 

Its the shifter your using, not the trans. I went from the 3 mile throws on my hurst comp plus to a hurst super shifter that has a throw as short or shorter than my 02 gt with a tri-ax.

As far as it being archaic, I think that is great. They built them to handle horsepower back then. I have broken axles and a pinion support on my 9" in my stang and the toploader just begged for more power.

 

Toploaders do not suck:-| They're a staple of bulletproof Ford engineering. They were so good, in fact, that Tremec bought the design and used it for the basis of the TKO.

No, it's not as smooth as something like a T56, but with the right shifter it will work very well, and will handle pretty much whatever you throw at it. They even work well with a rebuilt OE shifter, but most people don't realize that you can rebuild the original shifter.

 

They were also so good that the current Jerico WC-4 and Richmond T-101 NASCAR trannies are based off of them. The shifting is notchy because they don't have synchros, they use a brass blocker ring instead, that accomplishes the same thing. They may not shift as well, but they take a lot of brutal abuse, and with the Hurst shifter I have on mine it shifts quick between gears.