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

[travisxcore]

Confused Update:

So I completely lost right now. I pushed my Celica back yesterday because it was in the way of the sprinklers and for ****s and giggles I threw it in reverse to see if I could be lazy (I start the motor up and let it run for about 10 minutes every other day so I had it running) and low and behold it went in and starts going. Now it was whining and shaking at first but after a minute I gave it some gas and it was fine. So after I'm out of the driveway I put it in drive and start going. Now it was pretty rough at first but I decided to go ahead and take it down a side road. After a few minutes of driving it started shifting buttery smooth. At the point I'm shocked, the motor was warmed up so I decided to gun it and see what it'd do. I got up to 80 and it went into every gear perfect, no jumps, stutters or anything. I go home to grab my phone so I can take it out for a longer drive. Well of course I put it in park, and when I come back out it doesn't want to go into reverse, it'd just whine. So I tried a couple more times; nothing. Today I decide I'm gonna go try it out, goes into reverse first try but of course it whines. Drive is completely fine though. I have no idea why it'd do this.

I might try flushing the fluid out and see if that helps any, but I highly doubt it. I think its just being a Celica and giving 110% even when its on its last leg. So as of now, I'm still searching for a new tranny. Lol.

This post has been edited by travisxcore: Jul 30, 2012 - 1:23 PM