Manual vs. Automatic Question
 

'88 GXL, automatic.

I was looking through the paperwork about the original (1988) sale and noticed it was reported to the DMV as a manual. The tachometer also goes to 8k, when I've heard automatic tachs only go to 7k.

I'm trying to figure out if it was sold as a manual and switched to an auto after the sale, or what. I'm gonna have the car up on a lift this week(end) and wanted to know if there were some way of identifying whether it was originally an auto or a manual, either by checking if the rear end is 3.9 vs 4.1 or some other neat trick.

Any tips?

-Goofy

all 86-88 tach had a 7K redline, and end at 8K, your car is perfectly normal, sometimes the DMV mixes things up, when i emission tested ,, my rx7 they wrote it was a sedan lol....

look at the firewall, are there holes where the cluthc master cylander would have went?? if your cars a real auto the holes wont be punched out.

if it's gonna be up on a lift you can see if new mounts were welded in or adapters were made for mounting the transmission to the frame. i doubt anyone would have gone through the troubleof converting it though... a S4 non-vert manual to automatic conversion would be the hardest transmission conversion to do onan NA. the mounts bolt to the frame at different angles, so they probably would have welded in mounts. plus going to auto is a downgrade.

"if your cars a real auto the holes wont be punched out."

the hole is punched out, but there is a block off plate there on automatics. easily removed.

Wouldn't it show the gears (like D, R, P, N, 1, 2, etc) on the gauge cluster if it was an auto?

that is more of a domestic thing than imports, the ones that i saw that were auto had a simple indicator next to the shifter in the center console.

5-speed S5's NA's have a 9K tach redlined at 8K. All other FC's have a 8K tach redlined at 7K .

Only S5 autos have the P-R-N-D-2-1 display in the speedo.