Dan; This may be a little late but maybe you will find it useful. I raced an ITA Tii for 8 seasons in the north east and although I loved the car I think it would be very difficult to build a legal car that would be better than mid pack. You'll find some great guys to race with but you'll only be going backwards from there. I think ITB is a different story, maybe not 1st or 2nd but I would think you could build a top 5 car. I agree with Noam that the earlier cars are lighter to start with and that the people to talk to are at Ireland Engineering on the west coast. Jeff Ireland raced a 2002 for years in ITB before moving to vintage. There were a number of 2002 in the north east for quite awhile, one of the fastest ITB cars was Randy Currier out of NH. There was also a few cars out of NJ that were very fast in both ITA and ITB including Mike Frost, Bill Zick, Wade Wilson, Paul Paparella and Rick Kiceniuk. These cars were mostly run out of Kiceniuk's shop, I think he was from Annandale NJ. I havn't seen Rick Kicniuk in a long time but he would be a wealth of information if you can track him down. I still see Paul Paparella from time to time running vintage events, he was from Westfield NJ, he might be able to get you in touch with him. Rick Currier (Randy's brother) can be reached at CTechRacing.Com. They are currently running an ITS 325 very competativly in the Northeast. As far as the 5 speed goes I don't think it is legal, don't hold me to that but that is the way I remember it. Depending on what tracks you are running you will want to find a 3:9 and 4:10 diff, the latter from a 1600. Which brings up a whole other class...ITC in a 1600. I hope you find some of this encouraging either way it was fun to remember, Good Luck ...John