yeah the car the tranny was bought out of was in good order..all except the HG went on the engine.. but i had drove the car about 3 weeks before the HG went... and it shifted fine. but i dunno something could have happened in the mean time... but i guess i can live with it. anyway as far as the axle shaft goes i swapped it out w/ the original from that mtx tranny and it went in no problem...so thats one problem solved. while i was doing that i checked out the shifter linkage and found that the cable bracket had a tendency to crawl around a bit and one of the C clips wasnt installed properly so i straightened that out and tightened up the bolts for that bracket so they were mucho tight and then i swapped out the master cylinder for a rebuild and re-installed the clutch restrictor...and well now it feels a LOT better... goes into gear a lot easier and what not.. but still the 1-2 synchro is still fuggard'd. but ive figured out how to live with it. just wait a few seconds to grab second and it'll go in like butter. now just i think i just didnt lube up the TOB quite enough or something... cuz i get this obnoxious squealing in the tranny...and it goes away when i press in on the clutch pedal just a little bit. so can i expect that to eventually go away or will it haunt me for a long time? i lubed that sucker up w/ some grease on the shaft, around the bearing and i used a hyperdermic needle to inject a little grease in the bearing itself. but i didnt get real carried away cuz i didnt want grease everywhere inside the housing. i guess the last question to compelete this little project is what can i do for a shift boot? i want to upgade the knob and boot for the whole little cosmetic thing... but do i need to get a factory boot first? or just adapt and overcome?