manual valve body

I have a Cope reverse valve body in mine with a Hurst Pro-Matic 2 shifter. I don't mind the shifting at all, really not that big of deal to have to shift it. When I bought the car it had a forward VB and I liked not having to find and deal with transmission linkage. I did have one issue, you can shift into any of the drive gears regardless of speed. When I changed valve bodies was use to the old pattern and went from second to first, instead of third, on a speed run and ended up breaking the u-joints, rear yoke and twisted up the rear so bad that the axle moved forward enough to do some body damage also.
I kind of like the forward pattern because you can go from 3rd into neutral. There has been a time or two that I've had an issue at cruise speed and throwing into neutral would have been nice. With the reverse pattern its not an option, pretty much have to slow down to crawl, as you downshift to get to neutral.