Decided to buy a manual valve body; have heard good things about Hughes, bad things about TCI, and the local hotrod shop is a Hughes distributer. So I decide to buy a Hughes unit.
Looked at their website, (http://www.hughesperformance.com/transvalvbodies.asp), and notice they don't say if their units provide engine braking in first gear.
Went to the shop, their distributor catalog doesn't say, so I call up Hughes direct.
First guy puts gives me to a trans specialist, who doesn't believe I have a 1990 727, then says that he wouldn't know because he's never driven a manual valve body before. So then he puts me onto the third guy, who I guess is a Specialist Specialist, and he says that he'll have to ask the Specialist Specialist Specialist down the hall... So he puts me on hold for a few minutes, comes back and confidently says "The forward-pattern units have full engine braking, the reverse-pattern units don't".
Not that it was a bad experience with Hughes, I was on the phone for under 10 minutes and they answered the question.
But I don't understand why they wouldn't mention such an important detail in any of their literature? I mean, isn't engine braking something that most people would consider before buying a manual valve body? I would think that'd be a question they'd have to answer all the time.