John, I agree with you 100%!
I am in the process of gathering parts at the moment. If this was something needed to keep forward progress on a job, then yes, I would have already ordered the parts off Ebay. But since i have time, I may as well get the most bang for my buck.
Hopefully have complete transmission bought by this weekend, guy in southern IN has a few listed on CL. I will be going down there this weekend to look at one.