I am looking to buy mr2 spider but want to know what tranny is most reliable? and what I should look for when purchasing like how many miles etc. Thanks for the help
yea I am going to wait and find manual seems to be much more reliable and I love old school stick shiftsI bought my first MRS last year, it was a SMT. Honestly I liked it up to the point it went into gear, locked up and wouldn’t work anymore. Turned out it was a little low on fluid (a little has spilled out from when I took the transmission out and installed a lsd, and clutch/flywheel (since I was there already))
Before I discovered that it was low on fluid, I ordered all the stuff to convert to MT from monkeywrenchracing. Conversion is not terribly difficult, but is time consuming.
Things I observed/learned
The SMT shifting was just as fast as manual shifting if you do the SMT mods.
Driving SMT vs Manual, just as fun. Maybe a little more fun with the MT because ... reasons... but SMT shifting was fun too. There are still days where I miss just being able to tap and shift gears.
You can be SMT and boosted. I had assumed you needed to be MT but was wrong.
The SMT robot shifter is kinda cool how it’s designed. The engineering that was put into it is actually quite respectable when you consider all the check and fail safe reactions to the environment and every possible condition. It borders on over engineered, but looking at like some of the high end exotic autoshifters, they arent any better, some are even worse.IMHO
If I were to do it again, I would couple the conversion with either a 2zz or K20/24 swap. It could save roughly $1k when buying kits over the entire level of effort. Because the kits have a lot of the same parts. Plus if you go to a different transmission, you won’t need to buy as much swap parts, if it comes with what you need.
If your SMT is working, drive it till it breaks. Then convert.
If you want to do an engine swap, do a MT convert at the same time.
This is a decent enough conjecture. Considering the expense involved in body work, paint, and interior restoration, if you ever see a clean Spyder, no rust, no dents, nice paint, nice top, no interior rips and tears, et cetera, buy it, no matter what the mechanical condition. Engines and drive train components are cheap as dirt, and easy as frig to fix.This is conjecture,