Why are you so adamant about the Ax-15 over the NV3550,
@Chris. Do you have a lot of experience with both of them? Is there any documentation that says one is better than the other?
I'm basing it off two things:
1) Parts for the AX-15 seem to be much more plentiful. Not to mention the entire transmission is cheaper to replace, see here:
https://www.advanceadapters.com/tech-vault/ax15--nv3550/
2) Novak, AA, and all the other places I talked to when researching the V8 swap all seemed to heavily favor the AX-15 as the manual transmission of choice for V8 conversions in Jeeps (yes, I know that V8 swaps don't really amount to much in this case). Take that for what it's worth of course. Novak regards it as the best five speed transmission ever installed in a Jeep:
http://www.novak-adapt.com/knowledge/transmissions/manual/ax15/. I think a lot of this just has to do with the fact that it's the more available and cheaper transmission of the two.
I'm not trying to say the NV3550 sucks, I'm just saying if I was going through the hassle, I would put in an AX-15 over the NV3550. Not trying to rip the NV3550 at all, I'm just thinking in terms of the more available of the two transmissions and the price point.
@Mark K also mentioned at one point that he had to have his NV3550 replaced, and the dealer wanted $3500 for a new one, whereas Advanced Adapters wanted less than $1500 for a new AX-15. He took ended up replacing his NV3550 with the AX-15 last I read.
I'm not trying to say the AX-15 is better, it's just more widely available it seems like... and a lot cheaper too!
If I had an NV3550 and it needed to be replaced, I'd swap it out for a AX-15, that's all I'm saying.
I've edited my original post to remove the word "better". That was a poor choice of words.