Has any one thought of making a cradle or support for the transmission to help prevent breakage? The Isuzu? seems to bethe easiest to find with decent ratios, but I have a getrag as well. I just was hoping a little prevention would go a long way. Does any one have any pictures of damaged transmissions to show what gives first? Thanks, Mark

What usually breaks them is solid mounts and/or too much torque and sticky tires at launching
the moment of inertia runs a huge shock through the drive train and something usually has to give.
Soft mounts and smaller tires will save the tranny or not hitting hard till you are rolling is also helpful.

the most common place for the MG5 is the case around the area which contains the differential.
the Isuzu has parts inside that go usually before the case does as it was designed to only take
the punishment a low torque motor can give.

My MG5 has probably lasted so long with the 4.3 (since 2000) because,
i use stock type rubber mounts which i replace every 2 years
using 225/50/16 high tread wear tires.
and not HITTING it when i launch... I squeeze the pedal.

I may lose a few 10ths in the quarter... but i spend no time repairing broken parts... and thats a good thing

View the powertrain as a system where everything must be matched and built accordingly. The Muncie, Getrag and Isuzu are light duty manual transmissons. There is really little that can be done to strengthen them. The gears are narrow and the bearings and shafts of the Fiero manuals are small . They were designed for a V6 and about 200 HP. The strongest is reportedly the FWD Getrag used on the Beretta. For a medium performance engine and for normal everyday driving they will work fine. However, if you read the post in the archives on how the same guy blew apart two manual trannys, it should be obvious that for serious high performance work, these Fiero Manual trannys just don't cut it.
The TH-125H can be modified to work reliably to around 300 HP ( some say more but I say that's it) If you are looking for a tranny that has been used with mega-horsepower engines that would be the 4T65eHD with Moser CV axels. . If you want to stick with a manual transmission West Coast Fieros sells a high performance 6 speed that they claim is pretty strong or if you are looking for just a bit more strength adapt the Beretta Getrag with Rodney Dickmans kit.
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so if you were aiming for over 400 hp/tq, the auto's are the way to go? I like having a stick, but at the same time i like the auto, so its all the same to me, i just don't want to be having to replace transmissions on a yearly basis. and one more thing, on those auto's that are rated to handle large amounts of hp/tq, does that mean the axels and diff are stronger too?