1) Solution is to set the parking brake before shifting to Park. As suspected, continued engagement of the brake might overheat the solenoid; John Cope will be the one to confirm/deny that.

2) Most manual VB's can have the stock throttle pressure operate the same as an automatic (instead of pinned wide open) so the firmness of the shifts are dependent on throttle position.

3) Burnouts in 1st gear are dependent on whether the VB has LBA in manual low. The why is because, without LBA, all of the load is on the sprag which is failure prone when abused. With LBA the load is shared with the band so the sprag is less failure prone.