I have a 93 touring automatic and last night my tranny quit working. I was meeting up with a couple people to do a few mountian runs,and watch some local drifters when this happened. The car is stock with 64,000 miles. I was waiting in a parking lot for about twenty minutes with the car running, as we went to leave I found out I had no working gears. I had it towed home at around 1:30 a.m. It would make it a few feet when it cooled down but thats it. This morning I got it pulled up on some ramps for inpection and was greeted with a horrible whining squel from the tranny. Anyone else fried their auto or know WTF is wrong ? I searched all f'n day and fuond ziltch.

 

The stock auto trannies suck for these cars (especially if the car is at all modded). This makes the perfect opportunity to do the 5 speed swap. If a standard is definately out of the question, there are a couple guys making great use of trannies (not sure the model) out of some chevys. Good luck.

Adam

 

SOmeone told me the tranny is the same in the MPV and Mada 929. I would like to find out if this is true. Mine is an auto also, and I would like to keep it that way with maybe the addition of a stall.

 

This is indeed true. They are the same tranny.

adam

 

The same auto tranny right? I'm looking for a manual tranny or rebuild kit and its becoming quite a pain in the ***.

 

I would like to know the skinny on these ....Is the tranny just a POS? or what...

In my old hot rod days, we built 727's bullet proof and put 500 ponies in front of 'em, a 3500 stall, and I never broke one....

Now, it could be that the 727 was one of the better trannys to come out of Detroit and my comparison is bunk, but I can't believe you couldn't build one of these to take some abuse... Has anyone ever put a stall in these ? Is one available? I searched a little for this and didn't see much on the forum..

 

They are not POS; they do exactly what they are designed to do. However, they aren't designed for higher HP applications. If you are going to try and build a higher HP RX-7, then you are either going to spend a small fortune on upgrading the auto tranny, or doing a manual swap.

 

Thanks for the insight... What's a small fortune.... Is it $1500, or alot more? I have a auto tranny guy near by that is quite good. A strong rebuild would be $1300 or so with a few durability mods.

In my thinking, this setup needs a stall. I see staying under 300 HP.... Do you think I am in the ball park here?

 

Did you check your fluid? I know it sounds simple but sometimes it's the smallest things that get overlooked.

 

If you stay below 300 HP the auto transmission should be fine. $1300 is reasonable. It costs more to convert to manual. There still doesn't seem to be much available for the automatic - probably because it's Japaneze and from an MPV - no performance market. Remember the car is very light. The HP is higher than the MPV develops, but to do damage it has to push against weight. The MPV weights around 4000 lb. A little 2800 lb car shouldn't tax the transmission very much.

Heck, it costs over $1000 to rebuild the manual transmission. I was quoted $650 without parts, and the parts are not cheap!

 

I would keep the auto in the car becouse thats what it came with. Level 10 will build you a very nice trany that will take the abuse you give it. Just my 2cents.

 

I just pulled the transmission pan to check the quality of the fluid, the level was fine it was the first thing I did when the pos broke. Anyway, the fluid was fairly burnt and lots of metal shavings in the pan, almost 1/8in thick on the magnet. I was also very dissappionted to find the end of a nice blue zip tie lying there. I guess the last person to change the fluid/ filter/ gasket was a major f'n tool!!!!

 

I bet your Low/Reverse clutch plates are fused together....like mine were at 49k miles. This occurred shortly after my T04s install. Long story short...the auto will not take the HP north of 300 - period, without major beefing up. And I had a large second cooler, tranny temperature gauge. Never got over 150F on the tmeperature. But the plate were welded together.

Drop it out and see. Then go manual, you'll never look back

tom