Thank you Yorker, your advice is sound and valuable. I've been exploring this on other forums and I have to say that this one is the most civil and at least the second best source of information if not the first. I really appreciate your patience (and that of everyone else that has contributed to the thread so far) in indulging the questions of this newbie. I'm not trying to stop the thread as there may well be others out there with valuable advice. I just wanted to pause to say how much I appreciate everyone's help.

I found a source, maybe it was Advanced Adapters, the sells an adapter that makes the world think the back of the 4bd1t and variants is a Chevy small block which is pretty handy since there are probably more adapters to hook trannies to that engine than any other. Which brings me to one more question:

If I run across (or decide to go with) an automatic transmission what are the attributes of a good candidate (length, obviously) and what model trannies would be good. That begs the question: what about the auto tranny that could easily come with the 4bd1t motor as most of the NPR/Chevy/GMC trucks were autos?

And one more: What is the rpm sweet spot for the 4bd1t? I'd like to get as close to that as possible at about 70-75 mph highway cruising speed.