A.T. finally died. Wat do?, Rebuild A.T. or swap to M.T. Options

[travisxcore]

So my automatic transmission finally died last night. It made it 209k miles so I'm not upset with it. Plus it managed to get me all the way home doing its little super-rev (thanks Brian for giving me it a name ) thing. 1st is partially there. The bottom of 2nd and 3rd are gone. And as far as I know 4th is MIA. I knew it was coming (I had times when reverse wouldn't catch for the longest time) and the solenoids have been outta whack for a while now.

So my question to you is should I:

A. Rebuild my automatic transmission.
or
B. Swap to a manual.

Just some things to think about before coming to a decision:

-I have a GT
-Money is a concern-I don't have 3k to drop sourcing a MR2 swap
-Mechanic/Labor/Blah isn't a concern. I have plenty of friends (and myself included) that can do either or no issue.
-Time is kinda of an essence thing, my Celica is my only car so currently I have to share with my mom (Galant ) and with me working 6 days a week were gonna have some issues.
-My bud has a wrecked manual ST that would pbly give me a lot of the parts I need for cheap (besides the tranny obviously)

Now why I'm asking you is because my friends and I are split on what I should do. I want a manual and I feel like this is the perfect opportunity but some of my friends feel as though I'll end up putting more into the swap then it would cost just to buy another Celica. To a point I agree with them that could possibly be true.


So 6GC, wat do? I want opinions for both options. Thanks!

This post has been edited by travisxcore: Jul 7, 2012 - 7:37 PM

[krom8]

Am I the only one who thinks this sounds more like the shift solenoid went bad? I've never had an automatic tranmission go out that will actually still function at all, in my experiece they'll just stop working. You might want to get someone who knows about transmissions to take a look at it, if it is just the solenoid it will save you a lot of money.

[trdproven]

Am I the only one who thinks this sounds more like the shift solenoid went bad? I've never had an automatic tranmission go out that will actually still function at all, in my experiece they'll just stop working. You might want to get someone who knows about transmissions to take a look at it, if it is just the solenoid it will save you a lot of money.

Its possible, i wrote the shift solenoid sticky, and have done it a few times with the A104e trannies successfully, but he mentioned swap to manual so thats the route I'd rather go. but if money is a big thing and he spends on a brand new OEM solenoid, just 1 costs 175 roughly. so you can imagine theres like what 2-3 solenoids, IDK if 1 or all is bad, but imagine the costs to find out after changing it, the problem is more than that unless you want to dissect the problem. Either get a good low mileage used A/T one or Swap to M/T. If you got a good sign that its the solenoid and nothing else would steer you to the idea that its probably a more major problem, then I would just do the solenoid. you can do a tranny diagnostic as well to see if what errors pop up.

This post has been edited by trdproven: Jul 19, 2012 - 12:34 AM