another thought I had is the crankshaft. more likely than not the smogger crank is not drilled for a manual trans input shaft. if so i'd rather butcher a 833 that I can get parts for than a one year only that there may not be any parts for.

if you get into the summit catalog and lookup Richmond 4spds (these are t10's) they'll give a torque rating for the transmissions. an iron case will take a little more but there simply isn't enough room in the gear case to put stronger gears.