[joyridin']

There are a few other things to consider. I would assume you have a fair amount of cam in your car, which would require a higher stall converter. When you do that, you will need some decent gears in the rear also. You can't run 3.08 gears with a 3500 RPM converter. You will smoke the converter and trans. Having 3.7-4.11 gears in the rear without any type of overdrive is really going to make the car tach out on the highway.

I really don't know beans about Ford transmissions, but if you are going to go through the work of replacing a stick, you might want to try to find something with a O/D in it for highway cruising. I would think an older Ford AOD from 93 or earlier can be built up enough to handle your engine.