My name's Euan and I live in NE England. I have recently purchased an 89' coupe in black (just a shell) and a 91' auto vert in dark green. I plan on going to shows in the vert while I weld (not too much to do) and paint the coupe shell and then swapping everything over however I feel bad because the vert has 60k miles and had an engine rebuild 9k ago and overall the car is mint. In order to get the auto on the road I need to fix the gearbox. You can select reverse however there is no drive at the wheels can anyone help with this? Anyway, looking forward to a new rotary adventure as it's something different as I have restored and built a few cars already despite being 18y/o aha.

 

I think a manual swap would be the better option if you cant find another auto trans or someone out there to overhaul it. why tear the vert apart to make a whole car out of that blue shell? you say its black so i dont know if thats a typo or if that picture of the blue one is......... what?

anyway, you dont HAVE to use a FC trans if you decide to go manual. theres plenty of adapter plate options.... and by plenty i think i mean 1

 

the shell has been brush painted in blue but it’s supposed to be a black car the paint is really nice in the door shuts and the bay. I got a spare auto box but I don’t know if it works and I know a guy that says I can have his spare auto or a s5 turbo box for £350. Think I would just build the blue shell into a race/drift car

 

The easiest thing would be to swap in a known good transmission. Takes a few hours and you could be back in business with the convertible. Swapping in a manual transmission would be the preferred choice if it were mine. Then I would keep the car and enjoy it.

The blue car would be fun to rebuild and restore. Or race, whatever you choose. I wouldn't part out the nice convertible to build the blue car if it were me.

 

welcome to the board.

^ agreed! my sentiments exactly.

as for your tranny (if we're still trying to troubleshoot/diagnose it), you specifically mentioned reverse. what happens when you put it in "drive"? any noises? is the fluid clean and at the proper level?

 

The tranny goes into drive and reverse fine without any clunking or other worrying noises and the car will move under its own power in drive. In the reverse position it’s like it’s stuck in neutral. No grinding or other noises but it’ll Rev up but not move

 

It sounds like it needs a transmission. I would either have it rebuilt or source a known good transmission. Have you considered manual transmission swapping the car?

 

i don't know how sophisticated the computer control for the transmission is with the Gen 2 cars, but i'll put this out there nonetheless. maybe you should also consider a possible electrical issue (faulty ground or like a shift solenoid or something).

 

The car came with a spare auto box of unknown condition so was hoping that it might be working. I will eventually manual swap it just can’t afford one right now and can’t ever find any for sale

 

when I bought the car guy guy had ripped all the centre console apart so could be the case. I heard somewhere that there’s a bolt that looks like the drain plug but is actually something to do with the reverse gear idk if that’s true or not or what it does if it’s true

 

I think its easy enough to replace the trans and would consider doing so. Have you pulled the dipstick in the spare trans you have? Smell the fluid and observe the color. If the fluid is brown and smells burnt at all, I wouldn't use it. If the fluid is still a ruby red and smells like nothing other than automatic transmission fluid, I would give it a try.

 

cheers, I’ll have a look but I think the previous owner said the spare box had been sat outside for a while under a tarp so could be junk anyway. Do you know where the best place to get a manual box from? I never see them on eBay and the only luck I’ve had is through messaging people breaking cars up but they always have a massive waiting list

 

I think the issue is your location unfortunately. I'm not certain how readily available they are locally as the FC was somewhat rare there was it not? have two FC manual transmissions in my parts cache and I see them come up for sale a few times a month here in my state.