Thanks for the heads up on this thread rjleiker....I have too many forums to participate in and sometimes can't get back to one or another for awhile.
As for the Pilot bearing...when using a TKO, you MUST use a needle roller bearing. Reason being is the input shaft bearing is a cone bearing and the tolerances inside the TKO are extremely tight. If you grab the input shaft of your muncie you will see alot of "play" in it. Grab the input of a TKO and you will instantly see the difference. There is .000"-.004" of end play on a TKO. With a bronze bushing, when it starts to wear, the inside diameter will become "bigger" and not support the TKO input like it should.
I know the "old school" guys swear by bronze bushings and quite franly, there is nothing wrong with them, but when using a TKO transmission, they are not an option. Also, be sure to go thru the procedure of dialing in the bell housing so as to align the imaginary center of the register hole opening in the back of the bell to the center line of the crank. This will ensure the input goes into the crank as straight as possible. Mis-alignment tolerance is .005".
As for shifter position of the G-body cars, when we did the G-body kit, if the car was a factory 4 speed car, we used an early X-body shift position like meatdrapes car. If the car was an automatic, I believe we just left the shifter in the stock Tremec location and if I'm not mistaken, the only cut needed was to make a hole for the shifter to come up thru the floor. I really can't remember exactly, sorry.
We did run into an issue with the cross members when we found a difference or break in the 10 year span. I can't remember where the break occurred(I'm sure you guys do) but one body style used a cross member that came straight across from the passenger side and then dog legged forward on the drivers side and the other version came straight across from one side to the other. We still have some of the straight across ones in stock. If you want to use one of those but have the original one that dog legged, you have to install frame extenders to utilize it.
Hopefully this answers some of the questions, if not, let me know.
Richard
Tech Support
Keisler Engineering