I swear this is meant sincerely - have you driven a t5 box before D? They are a fairly agricultural shifting box, not good for quick shifts, and there's been a couple of threads on performance forums from people having trouble with brand new ones, and so forth - very noisy, rough imprecise shift. Don't get me wrong here, any half decent driver won't have any problem using one, but they aren't as smooth as some of the nissan/toyota boxes to shift gears.

The toyota ratios probably aren't fantastic, but with a turbo setup, you can have massive torque from the minute it spools, and it'll typically respond very well to pulling it down a few thousand rpms on the gearchanges, and if done quick enough it won't spool down too much during the shifts, so it'll pull hard with each gear being engaged.

It's certainly a lot of work, but I'd still make a strong case (pardon the pun) for the 71b boxes out of the series 3 bluebirds (or ca20 spec 71b boxes from elsewhere around the globe - ca20, not ca20det, which I think got the 71c? . I specify this box for the following reasons - hasn't been behind a ca20det so probably not thrashed as much (even though the 71c is undoubtably a better box) and also about the 'newest' of the 71b boxes, so has all the little improvements they made to them during their production run, and lastly probably cheaper to source (esp for Aussies) from the series 3 bluebird than a 71c would be, and cheaper (maybe) than earlier 71b boxes that saw use in z cars or whatever they were fitted to (I actually forget sorry)

Their ratios aren't perfect, but they aren't totally miserable either.

I admit, I'm currently banking on this conversion for my own car, but I did a fair bit of thinking and reading/talking before I made the choice. I'll certainly be the first to come back here and say I was mistaken if it doesn't work out, but I'm fairly optimistic about the conversion.