What is the application?  A NP435 is a medium duty truck transmission, and generally is used as such.  I have an Advance Adaptor Overdrive in my '85 F-350 behind the 6.9 IDI as well, but I would never consider shift times as a top priority, shift times being the main advantage of the toploader.  My suggestion would be to replace the NP435 with a Diesel (close ratio) T18 / T19 that will have ratios similar to the top loader and a shifter placement that is the same as the NP435 and be happy.  The Advance Adaptor definitely doesn't help with quick shifts either since you have to wait for the additional shafts in that thing to change speed as well.

It's somewhat uncommon to see at anything less than at the OEM level in most gas applications, but pretty common in diesels is to install pressure transducers and watch actual cylinder pressure. Doesn't matter if you call it a burn or explosion, what matters is the resulting cylinder pressure curve is controllable and within a range that the hard parts will tolerate. Watching the pressure grafs you can certainly tell when you've gone too far into "explosion" range and start seeing big spikes in cylinder pressure rather than a nice curve.

I'm not 100% sure what equipment the OEM's use. When I was messing around with it I cut up a pair of generic SBC heads on a 350 when I was messing around with it.

On some of the diesel's I worked on it was a service manual "tuneup" to measure each cylinder and adjust fuel to each cylinder to balance the engine. But we're talking stationary stuff here. Still, the perspective watching actual cylinder pressure and how it changes based on RPM and timing, etc. is interesting.

I used to be a Test Engineer at a snowmobile and ATV manufacturer.  We used all piezo-electric pressure transducers to monitor cylinder/combustion pressure.  Along with monitoring crank and cam position to the .01 of a degree, valve position with laser transducers to catch any valve float, and strain gages on each of the petals of the reed valves (2 strokes), it was amazing how much data you could gather.  The flutter experienced by the reed valve petals on an 800 cc 2 stroke turning 10,000 on the pump always fascinated me.  The fact that we could see that movement and graph it precisely in relation to crank position, cylinder pressure, injection timing, or any other wide variety of variables helped dial these engines in precisely. 

It was not unusual to record data at 100,000 Hz or more to see exactly what was going on.  Then again, these were $3,000 pressure transducers plugged into $80,000 Data Loggers running inside $3,000,000 AVL AC drive dyno cells.  Definitely not your shade tree mechanic level stuff.

This is cool, Brent.

I always been a fan of the 352, and I hope you keep it at that displacement for as long as possible and see what can be wrung out of a short stroke, high rpm, large port motor before giving into the herd mentality and dropping in the long arm crank.

Start with the Intake and Carb
Exhaust
Cam
Compression (pistons first, then heads???)
Save the crank for last, unless the one that is in there is toast.

2nd vote for Broader Performance.  I run a Broader built AOD behind the 352 in my '62 Monterey Wagon and love it.  I don't know what problems in shipping a trans from Texas to Scandavia would crop up, but I imagine more then a few hurdles would pop up.

The floor of my Monterey was rusted out, so when I built the car, the new floor was made to fit the AOD drivetrain, so I couldn't tell you if you would run into problems with the stock floor or not.  That said, you will have to modify the transmission crossmember for an AOD.  The mount is about 6" further rearward than the original Cruis-O mount.

The biggest problem with the AOD conversion is when adapting both the Cruis-O bell (Broader), or the Quicktime bell is it limits you to a 11" or smaller custom torque convertor.  It is very difficult to build an 11" convertor with a low stall (less than 2000 rpm), for highway use in a heavy land barge behind a big displacement, torquey FE.  If you want a higher stall for running on the track or in a lightweight car, no problem.  I used the Quicktime Bellhousing to adapt an AOD to the 390 in my '76 F-250.  That 390 made right around 450 ft-lbs of torque, and I had 3 torque convertors built to try to get the stall down low enough so as not to cook the oil at North Dakota highway speeds (75+) while towing.  I eventually gave up and put a C6 back in it.  Hindsight being 20/20 I should have converted to manual since I had a New Process 435 under the bench and Ranger Gear Splitter OD's are much cheaper than multiple custom torque convertors.....

The 3rd option is to order a Bendsten's or Wilcap adaptor plate and use the original AOD or 700R4 bell with a 12" or larger convertor if needed.  I have a friend who used the Bendsten's adapter to put an AOD behind his 500+ ft-lbs 428 in his '64 Marauder.  The down fall is the Bendsten's adapter pushes the trans 1.5" rearward.  This required some "massaging" of the firewall to get the AOD to fit properly.

https://transmissionadapters.com/collections/ford/products/ford-fe-352-360-390-406-410-427-428-to-ford-aod


The Broader AOD with the Cruis-O bell adapted to it.


Modified Transmission crossmember.

Sad, but we humans are not very good at calculating risk.  All things considered, statistically it was probably much more dangerous for him to drive from Iowa to Coffeyville, then it was to actually race.  If he had died on the road to the event, it would have been just another traffic accident, and nary a word would have been said.  Hopefully the event organizers learn from this and continue on.

The street drags in Coffeyville are probably much safer (at least for the spectators), than the Truck street drags in St. Joseph-Beauce, Quebec.  88,000 lbs at 50 mph has much more kinetic energy than 3000 lbs at 120 mph.

St. Joseph-Beauce.


Coffeyville

I did the late 80's Cavalier/Sunfire rack conversion on my '62 Monterey.  Works great with the stock Eaton pump.  Local hydraulic shop made up the custom hoses.

These things aren't designed for service and repair to be easy.  They are designed for assembly - as quickly, easily, and cheaply as possible.  A couple more hours of labor on the dealer / mechanic side is worth far less to GM / Ford / Toyota / etc, then a few minutes saved and less chance for mistakes on the assembly line.

The only concrete floor coating system I have ever seen work well was professionally applied in a new chassis dyno cell at my previous employer.  It most definitely wasn't cheap (about $4.00 per sq. ft), and the guy spent many days cleaning and prepping the surface (mixture of new and old concrete), but it held up to all the shit that happens in a dyno cell (hot fluids, flying debris, dropped tools, etc.) for many years.  Other places in the shop (ATV / snowmobile R&D facility) they used the cheap floor "paint" from Menards / Lowe's / Home Depot and it would only last about a year before it would be peeling.