I'm from the old school 3rd generation I'm going to remove my turbo 400 and put in a 700R4 from a 1985 suburban into my 69 SS396 elky I don't have any knowledge of computors, SOOO my ?? What do I need to make this swap work? FatherLee

According to an article I have in a Car Craft magazine, November 2002 issue to be exact, you are looking at a few modifications. The distance from the front edge of the bellhousing to the transmission mount on the TH400 is 27 15/16" but the TH700-R4 distance is only 23". You probably need to have your driveshaft modified as well as the crossmember. This particular article warns against using pre-'87 TH700-R4s because they are prone to developing a crack in the input housing and also in the sun gear shell. This article says that stand-alone computers are available for non-computer controlled vehicles for swaps such as yours but they don't mention any manufacturers, maybe you can go to Car Craft's web page and look up this article. It's called GM Auto Trans ID guide and contains a lot of information along with these webpages:

Art Carr Transmission Co.
www.artcarrtransmission.com

JW Performance Transmissions
www.auto2000.com/jw

Driving an automatic with an overdrive is heavenly and opens up a whole new dimension in driving satisfaction, not to mention that rear gears can be quite steeper for that off-the-line power without sending the engine to screaming RPMs on the highway. I have been toying with the idea of getting me a GearVendors overdrive box that bolts to the back of almost any transmission and basically doubles the number of gears in the transmission but that's another story.

Hope this will help.

Thanks for your responce I knew I would be dealing with mount and driveshaft differences but my concern is a kickdown linkage that my elky does not have and some kind of computor thing that will lock up the torgue converter? Where can I buy these things? etc. LEE

Here go to these peoples place and check out their articles. They have what you need. You don't need a computer just some extra wiring and some other mods. I installed one in my 80 behind a 383. I will say this your 396 is pretty close to being too much for it. Get a good cooler, you'll need it.

http://www.700r4.com/FAQ/faq.htm

You'll like the swap and if you don't already have a decent gear ratio in the rear end you can do that too at the same time. It will be like having a whole different truck.

Hey THANKS this site is just what I needed your info is very much appreciated. FatherLEE