Chevy Donor car - transmission issues $$?

So I'm in the market for a donor car/truck for my ratrod. Have a line on 2 potential victims, each with tranny issues but good 350s. I know very little about auto trannys so wanted to see if anyone thinks these are fixable without a rebuild:

86 chevy dually - trans shifts fine, but you have to do it manually. If you leave it in Drive it does not shift on its own. Any idea what this could be and how much $$?

87 chevy caprice - trans shifts but sticks in gear, takes it awhile to shift. Same questions as above.

Each of these are $500 for the whole car and have good running 350s

The dually sounds like it has a shift kit in it that converts it to be shifted manually Nothing wrong with that you now have a clutchless manual trans.

In our area you can a complete rebuilt TH350 with converter for $500 with exchange or $100 core charge.

the guy with the dually said it needs some "diaphram" to work properly. Who knows, but I suppose I could live with manual shifting for a bit.

By diaphram he probably meant a vacuum modulator. This can cause the shifting problems described. They do not cost not that much to replace and attach to the outside of the transmission so if in fact the modulator is the problem, replacement can be done easily in a few minutes.

$500 for either car? man thats a good deal. You can pull the motor and trans and sell the rest, you should be able to make back half the money spent.

Thanks! Looks like I was too slow - cars got snatched up already.