so i recently bought a 1990 rx7 fc very, the owner told me that the automatic transmission in it could also be a manual. there some buttons near the stick of the transmission and next to the drive options like Drive, Park, Reverse, and Neutral, there are number 1,2, and 3, and above that it says hold and it says an arrow down. the actual stick for the transmission has the button to change the drive options but then there’s another grayish button in front of that that i don’t know what it does, can anyone please explain?

 

Ok I'll try to answer with my limited knowledge of the automatic. To start off it doesn't have manual gears. Internally the manual and auto transmissions are completely different animals. The various buttons you describe are there to activate different modes in the auto to try to mimic a manual transmission. One is a sport mode switch I believe. It changes the shift points. Hold has something to do with torque converter lockup on accel and decel I think. You manually control the shifts by putting it in 1 and then shifting up or down with the stick as desired. All this is an attempt to mimic a manual but it's not the same as a real manual. I hope the p.o. wasn't trying to mislead you into thinking it was.

 

ohhhh ok i understand now, that makes sense thank you. do you know what mode i have to put it in to have access to doing the “manual” side of it?

 

Not sure beyond putting it in 1 and then shifting it like a manual. May want it in hold mode as that changes the lockup and may make it more manual like. Just have to play around with it. Also I think there is a button on the side for OD on Off. This just locks it out of overdrive(4th) so it won't shift up into it. Sometimes when climbing steep grades or towing you may want to stay in 3rd. Otherwise it will shift to OD but not have the power to maintain speed there so it shifts back to 3rd, then to OD and just keeps going back and forth. Turning OD off stops this.

 

is the OD button you are talking about the button in between my handbrake and my stick? cause there’s a switch there but the lettering is completely worn off so i don’t really know what it does.

 

I may be leading you wrong as all I have right now is the FSM and it's confusing. Hold may be it. It seems to hold it in whatever gear is selected until you change it but then they talk about testing the 3-2 downshift in hold mode so who knows. My parts car was an auto but it's raining pretty hard right now. Maybe it'll slack up and I can go find the shifter later. Shouldn't hurt it to press the various buttons on a test drive and see what they do.