New Venture NV3500

The five-speed manual in the half-ton American pickups and their SUVs — the Chevrolet S-10, Tahoe and GMC Sonoma, Sierra and Yukon, and the Dodge Dakota.

New Venture Gear was a joint venture between General Motors and Chrysler, which is why one gearbox appears under both companies' badges in the same years and why a part sourced from a Dodge fits a Chevrolet. Very little else in this catalogue works that way, and a search restricted to one marque throws away half of what has been written about it.

It uses ordinary engine oil rather than gear oil, and this is the single most consequential thing to know about it. Filling one with a conventional 80W-90 gear oil ruins the synchros — they are designed around a much thinner lubricant — and the result is a gearbox that grinds into second and third within a few thousand miles. A great many NV3500s have been condemned for a fault that was a fluid choice.

Beyond that, the recurring complaints are the shift tower and its detent springs (a lever that flops or will not stay in gear) and second-gear synchro wear, which is where the miles land in a truck driven in traffic.