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Has anyone had their transmission rebuilt recently or can give a definitive guide? I am not wanting to rebuild it myself, but I am looking at dropping it off or sending it off.
Looking for recommendations for shops and rebuild kits. Everyplace I have called in my area does not rebuild them and always recommends me to their, "buddy" who rebuilds them in his backyard shed. It also seems parts are really hard to find for these things. I have done a google search for parts but cannot determine what is good quality vs cheap Chinese material. Sorry this post seems a little ignorant, I am just completely in the dark.
Liberty's Gears will rebuild the FD transmission. They can do anything from a stock rebuild to a fully built racing trans with heat/cryo treated parts, face plated gears (removing the syncros) and oil bars spraying oil directly where it's needed most. They're professional and solid.
The price in that link is for the full monte, a standard rebuild with less bells & whistles would be appropriately cheaper.
I have mine in there right now getting everything except the face plating. They're just waiting on my shop to pull/ship the trans case where they added on a port for my oil bar.
Last edited by fendamonky; May 26, 2021 at 04:41 PM.
Liberty's Gears will rebuild the FD transmission. They can do anything from a stock rebuild to a fully built racing trans with heat/cryo treated parts, face plated gears (removing the syncros) and oil bars spraying oil directly where it's needed most. They're professional and solid.
The price in that link is for the full monte, a standard rebuild with less bells & whistles would be appropriately cheaper.
I have mine in there right now getting everything except the face plating. They're just waiting on my shop to pull/ship the trans case where they added on a port for my oil bar.
Four or five years ago a local shop did a fairly comprehensive rebuild on mine after it developed a noisy input shaft bearing. I remember them saying their normal suppliers weren’t much help except for a couple things they thought were common with the Mazda/Ford trucks of the same era. I got them hooked up directly with Ray Crowe who was able to get most everything else. IIRC about $1200 with me R & R’ing the transmission.
Yup, Ray Crowe just got me all the parts needed for the rebuild--- Crowe.Ray@aol.com
I have a very good guy here in NJ, he owns a Mopar speed shop and works on all sorts of cars but is a trans expert going back decades.
About 5-6 years ago he installed the OS Giken gearset in an FD box for me and it def wasn't simply drop-in. Required some custom work from a smart trans expert. I sold that one and always regretted it, so he's building me another right now
Four or five years ago a local shop did a fairly comprehensive rebuild on mine after it developed a noisy input shaft bearing. I remember them saying their normal suppliers weren’t much help except for a couple things they thought were common with the Mazda/Ford trucks of the same era. I got them hooked up directly with Ray Crowe who was able to get most everything else. IIRC about $1200 with me R & R’ing the transmission.
That sounds about right. All of the shops I have called have said that they cannot get the parts, blah, blah, blah. I ran into the same problem when I was having the car repaired at a body shop. Will give Ray a call. He is the man.
To go back a step, what problem are you running into with the transmission? Your car is relatively low mileage and it's uncommon for low mileage transmission in near-stock cars to have issues.
It also seems parts are really hard to find for these things.
Mazda has their own transmission factory, so they make their own stuff, so the only place to get a lot of it is Mazda.
the R box was used in some 80's Fords, because Ford doesn't have a transmission factory, but these are closer to the T2 trans than the FD, so they only share some bearings and the lock nuts
To go back a step, what problem are you running into with the transmission? Your car is relatively low mileage and it's uncommon for low mileage transmission in near-stock cars to have issues.
Dale
Grinds in third unless you wait for the RPMs to drop very low and shift very slow.
Last edited by suzukisteve; May 27, 2021 at 11:25 AM.
Reason: spelling
Sounds like a bad 3rd gear synchro, someone must have hot dogged that at some point. Weird that it's 3rd, broken 5th gear synchros are super common.
Personally if the rest of the transmission is fine - no noise, shifts into gear OK, etc. - just find someone to replace that synchro. I don't think it's worth trying to go through everything else.
Sounds like a bad 3rd gear synchro, someone must have hot dogged that at some point. Weird that it's 3rd, broken 5th gear synchros are super common.
Personally if the rest of the transmission is fine - no noise, shifts into gear OK, etc. - just find someone to replace that synchro. I don't think it's worth trying to go through everything else.
Dale
Most definitely, just trying to replace the synchros, not trying to do anything crazy. 5th grinds once on a blue moon, but even my 8,000 mile Rx-8 had a grind in 5th.
I don’t know...you’ll have the transmission out, drained and disassembled. Like you said, it’s weird that it’s 3rd gear. I’d have them really look things over, especially other brass. And new seals front and rear.
Thought I saw Atkins sells rebuilt transmissions, ready to go. Obviously not cheap, but a specialty shop will be between $2-4k with parts and added labor if they have to pull it.
I'm lucky that I live near a shop with an FD specialist. I had my transmission rebuilt, with all stock parts.
I'd say any transmission shop with a good reputation should be able to rebuild an FD transmission. They aren't special in comparison to any other manual transmission, really.
Reason I say to just fix 3rd and leave it is there may not be good parts availability and/or they may try and use inferior cheap parts if they can't find OEM. Don't want to get 3rd fixed then realize the cheap input shaft bearing they used crapped out a year later.
The last quote I got locally to rebuild my FD transmission with the parts required once they got it apart and looked (usual bearings/synchros- but also a shaft) was ~$1,800 and a brand new trans from Mazda was $2,300 so I went with new.
the thing is, I had a local trans/drivetrain shop doing work for me. In particular the last trans I had them build was the best one I ever had. The usual culprit was shearing off all the teeth on one particular gear. That trans lasted two seasons, was run at and sustained 10,000 rpm often, and never had an issue until it started to whine; bearing was seizing up, likely the rpm use I figured. I had moved half-way across the country from where that trans shop was since then though.
So I sent it to a race shop that specializes in Mazda Rx7-Miata-RX8 manual transmissions instead thinking it wouldn’t be any issue to rebuild & blueprint; some new bearings, a new set of synchros, etc.. The called me after opening it up; it looked like Fred Flintstone had repaired it with his chisel; hex set screws stripped, obvious banging from a hammer and chisel, screwdriver, or whatever they were using. It was kind of a mess to the point they had to buy a used salvage yard trans to replace some of the unusable parts in mine (only charged me for the partial parts though). That was the shop I had linked above before seeing they’re currently so swamped they stopped taking orders temporarily.
So it taught me that you can’t always judge how good of a job somebody did by how it seemed to work after. The nice thing about that race shop is they have a transmission dyno they can run it through the gears with after rebuilding it to make sure it works properly before sending it back. Not the lowest cost option though; probably would be around $1600 or so.
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After my trans broke at WGI and was rebuilt, the rebuild had a grind into 3rd and 4th, which turned out to be the hub/sleeve and wasn't easily diagnosable the first time 'round.
I called Ray this morning. He does sell OEM rebuild kits for ~$600, which is what I will be going with if it needs more than just synchros.
A new transmission from Mazda is $2700 and he said it would take 2 months to get here from Japan. At that point I would be better off to buy a blueprinted trans from Pettit. I doubt it will come to that, as I only have 70k miles on mine.
Mazda Motorsports sells the RX8 version (never was a USDM option); you’d have to swap the bell & tail housings along with the shifter rods (or keep the BH and switch to a push clutch), but then you’d get 1st - 3rd gear triple synchro rings and some other internal upgrades.
Yeah I was just about to say that - the RX-8 JDM 5-speed is internally an FD transmission but has some upgrades to it. They do pop up used but can be hard to find on Ebay since there's so many people selling the 6 speeds.
If you do that you would probably want to swap 5th out for the US 5th, my trans is JDM and that .806 5th gear sucks on the highway. It's not bad to swap over the US 5th gear. That's a .719.
Really? I've always heard the RX8 transmission is essentially a Miata transmission and can't hold the power. Otherwise wouldn't everyone be swapping in the 6-Speeds?
that’s the 2004 - 2008 RX8 Aisin 6 spd, it was shared with the NB Miata/MX5
in 2009 they switch to the (supposedly Mazda designed) 6-spd that was already in the NC Miata/MX5
The 5-spd is an upgraded version of the FD3S R15M-D transmission and i believe it was only available in Asia (maybe JDM only, not sure) and European markets on lower bhp models.
