Mark, maybe I can brighten your day a little. The 833 transmissions in either regular or OD flavor are one od the stroingest transmissions that came out of Detroit. Yes there were a lot of variations (various input bearing sizes, 2 input shaft and output shaft spline sizes and gear ratios but with 1 minor exception they all seemed to be up to the task. It seems that Chryslers basic thinking on the 833 transmissions was NOT to build a weaker version to put behind lower HP engines, but rather to build stronger transmissions for the higher output engines.

That one exception in my experience has been the aluminum case versions and the weakness has been the aluminum case it self. Yes I have seen 2 instances where the case has cracked, after EXTREME abuse. The cracks in both cases started at one of the cover plate bolts and ran about 3 inches.

Without knowing the setup your planing on running, here my thoughts on the 833OD units......

As stated above, the 833OD units have a pretty deep 3.09 first gear, and a pretty healthy OD ratio. THis allows people to run a relatively deep rear end ratio and still get a decent cruse RPM. It also generally gives you the advantage of haveing enough gear that the first things to break are the tires from the pavement. The second thing will likley be U Joints.

Again, JMO, but unless your running a really built 392, or a very healthy (blown) 354 and has a suspension that really hooks and has very sticky tires I would not be too concerned.

If you still have reservations, you can either rebuild what you have into a castiron case or hunt for one of the 833 OD already built into an iron case that also has the large diameter output shaft (like I found).