Need some good advice please

I have a 68 Charger and it has been a 4 speed car it's entire life. I am considering a 727 but the only musclecars I have owned have been 4 speeds and I am not sure what I am looking for. The car will be a 470" and will be mainly driven on the street with a couple trips to the track each year. The car is also mini tubbed, 12 point caged, and will have a Dana 60 and drag radial tires.

Question is: Should I go for a 727 with a shift kit or a full manual valve body? What are the pro's and cons to each? I really have no need for a transbrake if that makes any difference. I am trying to learn so please treat me like a beginner because in this aspect of the hobby I am.

Thanks for any advice.

Ive ran the std 833, the a liberty 833 and then a GF101, my biggest disappoint was putting a 727 RMVB from a well known builder in the same car.

It will make your car simple and easy to drive if thats the goal but for me the fun factor went far out the window. I asked myself what my next mistake would be, the starbucks drive through?

After a bit of time I also went back to a reg. VB and std. mopar kickdown linkage. Since that car was no longer a track car the manual VB was just a feature I did not need and got to be more of a pain then a benefit. It also made the car as friendly as the come even with the same features you explained about your charger.

More like a 90s-pro street car then a real racer.

I guess it really comes down to personal preference and what your idea of a mainly street cruiser/very part time strip car should be. Nobody really knows that answer but you. My case in point is mr potatoehead’s response. I actually feel the opposite way. I have a ‘73 charger with a rb motor and installed a rmvb 727 from a local builder here (Freddy Brown) and I absolutely love it. No way would I go back to the stockish 727 with standard pattern shifting. Both trannys ran a 3500 stall converter, but to me, it is increadible driving experience driving it now with that rmvb. Very streetable, and instant crisp shifts when I shift.

Now my 68 charger is also a 4 speed car and no way I would change that to an auto. Just way too much fun with the stickshift and a different experience alltogether. My order of pleasure:
1: 4 or 5 speed stickshift
2: Rmvb auto built stout
3: standard pattern auto with some sort of shift kit for firm shifts.

Everyones wants and needs differ.

Many years ago I had a 1968 Dodge Coronet RT, 440 & 727 trans. I drove the car around with the factory console automatic shifter and enjoyed the positive shifts from the 727 that very likely had a shift kit of some sort. The car seemed to lunge forward into 2nd and 3rd gear under medium and hard acceleration -felt great.

I did a decent amount of drag racing so when I pulled the 440 for a rebuild, I also put in a cable activated race shifter and a reverse manual valve body (and a 5" monster tach!) While it did shift just fine and I got used to manually shifting for weekend street cruising, I missed the factory shifter and the feel of the standard self-shifting valve body. In the end since I mostly drove the car on the street, I regretted going to a manual VB and tossing the factory shifter.

I like the Turbo Action reverse manual valve bodies, they were the best out there for many, many years Maybe still so

I always had stick cars until the Duster project which had a manual valve body 727. Turned out that I really enjoyed driving that car, much more than a stick. The 727 was much easier to drive in traffic than a stiff clutch but the manual valve body kept me engaged with the car. Seemed like the best of both worlds. Not to mention, a torque converter makes it much easier to deal with a big cam on the street.

My street Dart that i built needed a new auto trans, so i had an automatic built by Lofgren Auto Specialtys, Chuck Lofgren, a friend of mine who has been building race and street torqueflites professionally and racing them for over forty years. I wanted a standard fully automatic forward valve body, and Chuck has scienced them out to the point they feel like a stock trans yet eliminate the usuall issues and weaknesses of a forward valvebody configuration. 612 978 6526. That car drove like a dream, 500 hp 408 in a 65 Dart.

The advantage of the full manual VB is no throttle pressure linkage is required from the trans to the carb. The disadvantage is that you have to shift it. Though a motor with decent torque will leave the stop with light throttle in 3rd gear w/o issue. 2 types of full manual VB. No low band apply, which will allow no downshifting to 1st gear, no burnouts in 1st gear. Or low band apply which can be out into any gear anytime. As far as trans reliability a shift kit with proper throttle pressure linkage (or aftermarket cable) will work fine. I would suggest Trans Go TF2
Doug

If it was my car a stock valvebody with a TransGo TF-2 kit. Making sure the kickdown linkage has proper adjustment and travel ratio. A manual valvebody sets the line pressure high all the time, not a problem with a drag car. A stock valvebody varies the line pressure with engine load by using a throttle valve operated by the kickdown linkage. The arrangement is easier on the transmission for street driving, and the shift kit gives you clean crisp shifts. The timing of the 2nd band release and front clutch pack are really important in making a 727 live. WOT bursts on the strip, a manual valvebody does this great. Part throttle street driving not as good. Also you retain rear band apply in low gear with the TransGo kit, some manual valvebodies do as well but most do not. That is a safety issue for me. Plus for me it would just get old shifting all the time, if you want to shift leave the 4-speed in it.

Thank you all for the replies, you have all given me a lot of good information to digest.

Good advice on here. I want to second a couple of things.

I also have two cars, one is a street 68 Road Runner with a 4 speed. I would never change this over because I do not race it and enjoy shifting on the street.
My second car is a 1970 Plymouth, (Was a Satellite but it is in transition to a Superbird, so for now will will just call it confused). This car I bracket race and run 7.0 index class with. I absolutely would suggest you do a Cheetah, (Turbo Action, like Cab said) reverse valve body in the transmission, along with their shifter. The shifter is not a cool or pretty as some but it is reliable and very robust. I burned up several shifter cables with my headers, and once I put the Cheetah on, problem solved. Oh it still burned the rubber off the cable eventually, but the wire wrapped housing is so strong, it has never failed or even needed to be readjusted.

Can you race a 4 speed, yes, but to be competitive, you have to either race in a class like gear jammers. Go to the track and watch. I knew Bullet Bob Reid back in the day. He had a record setting 68 Barracuda, and always shifted gears. He had the best set ups money could buy, but still often times broke. If you race, you will push it, and eventually it will likely break. In my opinion there is more auto trans parts for racing, since 95% of the folks racing use them.

Bottom line is you will need to decide between the fun of running a 4 speed vs the consistency and reliability of the manual valve body automatic. Good luck and have fun. This is all about the journey, there is never a final destination to working on these old cars.

The driving experience is very different between the auto and manual shift trannies. Do you know folks that have these so that you could experience them yourself? That is the only way you will know what you would prefer. But keep in mind that the combo may prefer one more than the other. The milder the combo, the more it would favor the full auto. The more radical it is, the more it may prefer the manual.

What RPM do you shift at? The farther you get above 5,000, the more difficult it gets to shift right where you want it into both gears with the full auto. A&A has the governors, but they usually take a good amount of experimentation to get right. The split shifts become more of a problem the more line pressure you have with the full auto. Overall, the full auto takes more time and effort to get dialed in to the combo.

Like most here, I have ran both full auto and manual and the combo has had a huge influence on what I preferred to drive on the street. For instance, my current street Hemi wants shifted at 6,800. That's not going to happen with the full auto. But my last 440 shifted at 5,600 and it had a full auto. So.......................

If it were mine, it'd get a reverse pattern manual valvebody that has low band apply.

as has been already mentioned, a stock valve body with a TF-2 kit works GREAT ! you can manually shift it, or leave it in drive to shift itself.
proper linkage adjustment is an absolute MUST ! it does allow for slight tailoring of shift points as well. to really get the utmost of the shift points, you need to work with the governor weights. that is relatively easy to do, however, the tailshaft needs to come off to do that.
Trans-Go also offers a full manual, forward pattern, TF-3 kit.
i have that kit, but never got to installing it, because my charger is still up in the air for other repairs to get it back on the road.