ChevyVan77, could you possibly do me a favor and ask your friend if he wants to sell one of his M22 Muncies? Preferrably one that doesn't have a bunch of fragged gears. And what would his price be? If the price is right, I can turn around and rebuild that M22 into one of those new Muncie cases and have a Rock Crusher for a decent price.
To be honest with you, the M22's I see at the swap meets usually go for anywhere between a grand and $1200 and I DO think that's a little too much. I'd love to have one though, and I would build it with a stronger case and a Gear Vendors overdrive unit on the back of it.
But really, many people do drive around with Muncies because there just haven't been THAT many options for stick shift Chevys in past years. Only now, the T56 6 speed double overdrives are starting to hit the swap meets, but they go for around $1400 and are rated at only 440 lb-ft, which is a lot less than what an M22 is rated for.
I do think your friend might have gotten ahold of some pretty tired M22s that perhaps were ready for a complete rebuild, either that or perhaps he runs some pretty gnarly big blocks with slicks, hitting it hard on the weekends at the dragstrip. But a lot of people drive Muncies of lesser reputation and don't have such problems with cracked cases.
You might want to talk to a transmission shop perhaps and get the opinions of some of the older professionals that have worked on a lot of Muncies.
Or...just buy a T10. But you know the Richmond T10 is really just a Muncie, they bought the rights to produce them. And the Richmond 5-speed is nothing more than a Doug Nash Muncie.
They're all just rebadged.
