For the manual transmission option, we have decide to move away from the R380 as the option we are going to support for the defender R2.8 conversions. We are doing this for a few main reasons.
After talking to about 5 defender shops that do full restorations, they gave the feed back that the R380 is on the boarder line of being strong enough to withstand the stock 310ft-lb rating let alone the hot tune we are working on that is at 380 ft-lbs. They told us that R380 can barely withstand the stock rover engines.
With all of that knowledge we just didn't fell comfortable selling you guys a solution that could one day have issues down the road. We want to design and support a bullet proof solution for all of our kits. So our new plan is to use a dodge NV4500 (gas). As the NV4500 has a rating of 460 ft-lbs, it can well withstand the punishment of a 5-6k pound rig with this R2.8 with a tune in it .
After doing a lot of measuring and planing, it looks like this option will land the Trans shifter right where the T/C shifter used to be, and the T/C shifter will be where the old trans shifter was. Pretty much they are just going to switch locations.
We are working with a couple shops that are going to help prototype the needed parts to do the NV4500 route. Luckily we already have 90% of the work already done, as we will be using our Hemi R2.8 adapter, and our Jeep 23 spline to LT230 adapter. The only R&D we will need is just making sure our T/C sifters from the 8HP conversion will fit correctly, and the transmission/TC mount for this setup.