[Aussie Mike]

The Viper T56 has a Steel 3-4 shift fork to help with hard shifts. 1-2 and 5-6 are still aluminium but 3-4 is where all the hard work is done. I usually fit on of these when I build a box.

There are now aftermarket bronze fork pads available for all the T56 shift forks to take care of any wear from hard shifts. The plastic/nylon pads can distort over time from shifting and I have seen this.

3-4 synchro is probably the weak link. Corvette boxes got tripple cone synchros for 1-2 and 3-4 but the regular boxes only got the tripple cone setup in 1-2. There are aftermarket kits to convert them.

Cheers