[Pete Munroe]

Mike, et al.

I installed one of MIKE FORTES' "mid-shifter" kits in my Tremec TKO. It essentially rotates the rear compartment shifter forward 180 degrees and you gain about 2.75" of "elbow room" in the Cobra car...the shifter stub is now just about where a original AC Cobra top-loader trans shifter would have been...HUGE improvement over a stock Tremec. After 5 years it works great. GREAT PIECE.

To the point of the original post...what I have been trying to convey is that if you ALREADY HAVE A EARLY series McLeod hydraulic t/o bearing with the god-awful banjo fittings from hell...they can be up upgraded by McLeod with a new housing to the "series 3".

(If your RAM leaks rather than the hose fittings, you probably do not have a proper pedal stop). ..that would be your problem...but the HOSES connected to the garbage "banjo's" are hopeless.

The "newer" McLeod hydraulic t/out is just fine (mine is now 5 years old at least and has about 10,000+ miles) The old series t/o had really poorly machined banjo's and leaked like a sieve at the banjo's...I replaced it TWICE...the last time I was at the McLeod shop I told McLeod I wasn't leaving the shop until I had the new one...which is actually the GM Corvette design...GM abandoned the patent and they jumped on it. Mine is the first unit, pre-production at that, they released, or I extorted, from McLeod...it is fine.

NOW...STARTING FROM SCRATCH....NEVER use a hydraulic t/o if something else works...Forte's NEW unit sounds the way to go for a minimum clearance situation where you have to cut down the clutch arc. 5 years ago it wasn't available.

Upgrade to the new housing and lose the banjo's...the new housing has machined 90 degree hose fittings...it works in thousands of C-4? C-5? Corvettes.

Starting from scratch? GO EXTERNAL!!! Mike Forte's EXTERNAL t/o setup sounds to have everything needed to work around a "lack of clearance problem" due to bell housing/chassis/clutch-fork issues.

Pete