I bought a 727 trans from a co-worker which he said was modified by Mancinni Racing years ago. I open it up and find the entire parking gear and governor body has been removed. This includes all rods, clips, etc. Was this common practice to remove in a performance/race trans buildup? This trans was in a street driven car. Second question, can you modify a stock valve body to work as a reverse valve body? It still has a stock plate between the valve body halves. The guy swears it is a reverse pattern shift. Any way to check this out on the bench?

Yes it was common practice to remove the governor, and park mechanism years ago. And yes a stock valve body can be modified for reverse pattern. I just got back a cable shift valvebody from Cope, that they modified for reverse pattern for a NSS car I am helping build. Cable shift valvebodies are getting rare so I sent them mine and the modified it. I am not smart enough to take valvebody apart and trace out the modifications, but you would have to take the valvbody apart to see if it was reverse pattern.

The 1970-era MoPar factory DIY kit included a new separator plate and transfer plate.

I never liked to take the park mech out.. you
would need to block a tire so it didnt roll..
gov yep.. be gone if its race

So I opened the valve body and the inner plate is a lot different than a stock one. All the balls inside have been removed except the largest one and the spring loaded one. Is this any help in determining reverse or stock shifting? The lower valve body section was machined in 4 places, cutting across passages. Will try and attach photo later.

Me too Mr P. A lot of staging lanes are down hill.

Tech inspection used to include putting the car into park, then pushing it. Pretty easy way to bust non model specific guts. Not sure what the rules are now.