So yea I picked up my car from Tom's house. I think he gave me a different car because it drives so much differently from how my car drove before I brought it in.
Those 4.44 gears make quite a difference
. I was driving it out of his town on the local roads thinking "eh it feels about the same". The 1-2 shift feels a lot firmer than my old tranny and the other gears were pretty much the same as my old tranny.
Then I got onto the parkway and shot out of the onramp like a bat out of hell.
For a good while I was babying it as I was getting used to the RPMs being much higher... I was pulling about 2900 for 70 mph which I wasn't used to at all. Now that the wheel bearing noises were finally gone I actually heard my exhaust from inside the car. Cruising on the highway isn't bad at all with the magnaflow even with high rpms, although you can hear it slightly which idn't annoy me too much, but then again I had no radio or interior the whole ride home.
I was still shocked at the improvement in torque and off the line response. At a tollbooth and I decided to do a fast takeoff but not flooring it. I think I hit about 4000 RPM and all my change flew out of the coin holder onto the floor
It took a while before I found the change I needed for the next tollbooth.
It turns out that the transmission originally in my car was rebuilt. I actually figured it was original but the outer casing showed that it was spraypainted gray.
All in all Tom did a great job with the swap and completed everything in a day. I was very happy to drop it off saturday morning and then returned the next morning to find that everything was completed. It didn't put any inconvenience on my school or work schedule and it turned out to be a success.
Thanks Tom!