OK heres some more interesting tech for you guys out there with a 3.2 or 3.5 (or 2.8 for that matter) and like your motor but not your weak 4l30e. Since these motors all have the GM 60* patern on them you have a lot of options for tranny swapping, heres the best one IMHO if you wanna keep an auto. There is an oddball 700R4 that came in an S10 behind a 2.8 that has a special 60* bellhousing which will bolt up to the isuzu motor and using an adapter from novak or AA you can mount up a D300 t-case. This gets you a much beefier tranny with a lower first gear, and slightly higher overdrive gear, and options for a near bulletproof t-case with lots of low gearing options.

Your stock 4l30 has a first gear of 2.86:1 and the stock t-case is 2.26:1 IIRC

With 4.56 axle gears your crawl ratio is 29.47:1
If you add in the isuzu TeraLows you get 40.03:1

The 700R4 has a 3.06:1 first gear, and the D300 has a 2.62:1

Again with 4.56 gears your crawl would now be 36.55:1, thats almost as low as your stock tranny with teralow gears, and if you wanna get even lower you can get 4:1 gears from tera for the D300, which would put your crawl at 55.81:1, much lower than you could even hope to get with the stock isuzu stuff. Plus you've got beefier parts now too.

Another swap this thread brings to my mind for those who like the manual trannies is the 2.8/3.4 or 3.2/3.5 to dakota bellhousing to toy R151 to stacked toy transfercases. Talk about low gearing, with that setup you could go well over 300:1 if you were so inclined.

This is some really exciting stuff, I hope I'm not the only one thats lookin hard at some possible swaps. I'm gonna be doin that 700R4 swap on a trooper pretty soon so we'll soon know for sure how hard it is.

Dallas