I'm looking into getting a new transmission crossmember (have multiple, all have bad center bushings).

The T2 transmission crossmember is $75 or so on Atkins whereas the NA one is $110 (both series 4). I have both an NA and T2 crossmember and as far as I can tell the only difference is a slight offset in the mounting holes. It seems Mazda just welded a plate a little bit over in the slot to make them slightly different, and if one were to grind out this plate you could use it in either configuration.

Is there anything wrong with buying the T2 unit and just slotting the mounting holes? Then it will work with my S4 NA transmission, and my S4 TII transmission if/when I swap it, and be ~$45 USD cheaper than the S4 NA crossmember.

Thanks

 

Ordered the TII crossmember today. I'll be the experiment, will report back with my findings. I don't anticipate anything unusual since this won't change the mounting position of the transmission at all, but we'll see what happens.

 

I forgot about this thread (probably since I'm talking to myself here), but on the off chance someone finds this by searching in the future I thought I would update.

All I did was slot the mounting holes as I mentioned above and now the cross member will work for both NA and TII transmissions. Worked perfectly (which begs the question why Mazda bothers to differentiate them, but whatever).