A known good M47 even with a dog dish flywheel is a lot smoother than an m46/flat flywheel. One of the main advantages of the t5 is that it can be rebuilt by anyone.
^This.
And ratio choices. Other than that, it's a bargain basement miserable 80s domestic piece of crap that's been in someone's mustang mullet missile (and driven accordingly) for the last 20ish years that comes noisy from brand new, with often fairly fragile shift forks and small fluid passages designed for specific ATF in ideal laboratory conditions only. Act accordingly. But they did produce tons of them.
As to the dog dish, apart from the 218mm pressure plate (paired with the flat flywheel in the volvo) often being stiffer and harder on your foot to push, for the most part, I find the dog dish so miserably heavy that it's actually *harder* to drive it in traffic or drive smoothly for the most part unless you really drive like an idiot that can't drive a stick or are having to slip the clutch a bunch for awkward driveways/hills with a really heavy load in the car. Still, I HATE that thing. If I must drive one of those dreadful things in order to drive a stick, I'd just have an automatic or move somewhere with less traffic/better roads for the most part.
GM adaptation requires welding, but 2.95 gear set stock, though those cars are totally disposable and owned accordingly. Alternate 5th gear for a 4cylinder to bring 5th up from .63 to something useful is often nice...
The mullet crowd pulls any of the desirable versions that are good out of parts cars/junkyards at the crack of dawn as the car is being set down or tweaker crowd just snaps the cars off the street and rips them apart (at least here).
Buy a TKO or something better if you've got the $ or even brand new if it needs much work/turd polishing at all for the avg T5 (can be had brand new for 1000-1400 in any flavor you wish for a T5, but TKO600 (worth having for torque handling) considerably more).
M46s tend to live a longer than M47s, gears 1-4 are identical, neither is really any stronger or weaker (M46 worse in some ways if J-type as the main shaft is super weak where it enters the OD).
But, since the M46 has the leaky finicky brit-ish (emphasis on the "ish) OD on it that stops working once it loses a minimal amount of fluid after peeing it out regularly, they're more likely to get a rolling oil change instead of the typical M47 "never" oil change and 1/2 the fluid missing/leaked out as it runs around on a pint of abrasive paste baaaarely reaching the gear it's most likely to spend the most time in continuously (5).
No thrust load in OD either (planetary gear set) vs. M47's 5th gear..
Pick your poison: M47 with some probability that it leaked etc (later versions are a little better (updated in 1990ish (higher fill plug, better seals, better bearings among other small/minor revisions) that always mechanically / reliably engages 5th. Though random across the board really for a noisy or quiet one. Real PITA to get the 5th gear off it to update a couple bearings.
M46 with finicky british OD, gear 5 may or may not engage, OD may shatter in reverse if abused or stuck on (finicky/gummed up solenoid) or main shaft may snap off in the OD (rare)...among other treats
Still, for a DD the cheapest thing to do is a turbo (Aisin/Toyota) automatic (AW-71) (despite all Volvo's contributions to adapt it to their chassis specifically to make it worse) which lasts better than all of them (but a rebuilt mint beefed up strongest imaginable version of a T5 or TKO anyway) for basically free.
Or just another M4x if it's down to cost/daily driver/mild only instead of a garbage 4cyl T5 to turd polish or a worn out V8 T5, or try to find a V6 as new/nice as you can and swap input shafts and still have marginal ratios...
TL;DR: Keep it auto on a TB budget if manual isn't required.
