Not completely related to the original question but manual valve bodies have been available for just about every domestic automagic since the dawn of time. Many serious street/strip cars run autos with manual valve bodies and a Hurst or B&M ratchet shifter. The shifter is pulled down into the ratchet mode and the subsequent gears are obtained by slamming the shifter forward once for every gear. The streetable shifters also have a full manual mode where you simply select the gear you want by physicaly moving the handle to the appropriate gate.

A more off-road friendly shifter would be something like this one from Art Carr. By simply changing the valve body ($150-$500 depending on the application) and having one of these shifters, you can enjoy total manual control over the shifting of an automatic tranny. Having compression braking going down a steep hill is just one of the pluses one can enjoy with an automagic. Around my neck of the woods, blasting through a mud hole without having to worry about the tranny shifting into too tall a gear is pretty handy.

Now I haven`t heard of any aftermarket valve bodies for Toyota autos but in this day and age you can get an adapter to mate anything to anything so if that is truly what you want you can have your cake and eat it too.

Toughguy <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />