re:
"...budget is $4000..."
Oops.
We live near the outskirts of Eugene, Oregon. The trucker paradise of Coburg is five minutes up the interstate.
We considered a similar conversion behind a big cam 400, so we went to the Allison dealer. Happenstancually, their shop was doing a conversion for the county sheriff. Tax-payers bought a core transmission, so that exchange reduced the cost to tax-payers by around ten grand.
The conversion cost to tax-payers was in the neighborhood of forty grand
This included the required replacement radiator, and re-gearing the drive axle from 3.08 to 6.13 to compensate for the double-overdrive.
For our conversion, the cost exceeded the value of the rig by several times.
re:
Sell your transmission
The value of your transmission is near-zero. The heavy truck dismantler Anderson Brothers has a warehouse full of old manual transmissions. Truckers tend toward automated manuals or Allison, so this's a seller's market.
Folks like you and me and the sheriff are swimming upstream. So... we have that going for us.
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