Bleh. Manuals are the way to go for fun vehicles.

I'm not building a fucking drag car. Its a turbo miata.

Whatever floats your boat.

So, an automatic in a miata will make it an attempted drag car?

I had a like new automatic. It sucked in first. After that it would move.
I think the tranny is the same as the rest of the ford rangers. You should be able to look something up for them. Those trucks came with pretty beefy V6's. If they are different. You might could swap one of those over.

In stock form, I would trust the 5-speed more.
I think the auto with a trans break would be way faster at the drag strip. But IMo, there is nothing as fun as a standard. But each to there own.

I have been dragging my 5-speed and all, it is holding up great. But I also have 2 spare motors and trannys at my storage. I show a little empathy between shifts, that is it.

A tall first gear might also help in a turbo miata, since first gear is almost as useless as my third currently is. :-) Actually, I blame the alignment. :-)

But I agree, it's the wrong sort of car for that. It just... is. You should never sleep at the wheel of a car that fast, so why install a 300 lb sleeping aid?

Dang you Pat.

You started a major thread drift.

I'm now worried about falling asleep when I get my car running.

Just a wee bit. I answered Abe's question already, so I figured I'd do him a favor and make the thread interesting. :)

Abe- You've never drove a built auto apparently.

learn how to shift?


:giggle::giggle:

Dear old dad's chevy was... pretty quick on it's auto. But it was a DRAG car.

My miata, at least, is a fun car that will also give most ricers a run for their money in a straight line.

Like the shortshifter I have... it doesn't make it any faster, but it feels damned good. :-)

And actually, my father's pulling out his auto to put in a stick. He's positive it'll slow him down, but you might as well enjoy what you drive. :-)


Speaking of enjoyment: Remember, when rolling your car by hand, be sure to shift from 1st to 3rd or the car won't roll effortlessly.

Pardon the thread drift, but...

Think there's anything wrong with taking out the loose bits, and still driving the car on the "4" speed?

I'm worried maybe about the shifter fork going bad places without a gear there.

the gear assembly acts as spacers on the internal drive shaft, with out the gears there, you'd loose other gears, 1st and 5th I think. your best bet would be to clean out the broken teeth, cause they'll eventually start taking out other gears, take the broken 3rd gear to a machinist and have him turn down the o.d. smooth. have you noticed any more vibration with the broken gear?

Well, I drove it very little, and 3rd just acts like it's not there. If there's vibration, it's MINOR.

Huh. I could pull the gear off and try to turn it, but the idea here is to not further inflate the budget on this. :-) I'll certainly check it for humps, take off what I can. Thanks for pointing it out.

Can't you just take out the chunks and not shift into 3rd? 5.0 mustangs where bad about loosing 2nd or 3rd. Until we could get a good tranny, we just drove them without shifting into the bad gear. We didn't even take the chunks out. Sometimes you where lucky, sometimes your not.

That's what I was going to try. My two options seem to be:
1) Pull out chunks, reinstall and drive
2) Ride the motorcycle for the next couple weeks

Huh, I got a set of "solid" diff mounts here, I wonder if I should throw them in while I'm at it. Hooking up in a straight would be nice, don't do that much anymore, I think it's all the camber.

Think those and maybe a diff brace would fix me up?

why would taking the chunks out increase your budget? shit ton of time involved, especially since I'd pull the whole engine/tranny assembly myself, then dig into the tranny, but at least its free.

Sorry, I spoke poorly. Bringing the gear to a machinist to have him take the teeth off would get pricey, certainly on the order of a new gear.

I have a friend with a bad countershaft gear, so I'm going to try to make one good tranny out of the pair. But I'm in a rush on my car, so I might just clean out the chips and put it back together.

i used to drive a fox that belonged to the shop i work at, it was a 408w with a 300 shot and the car weighed 2550. we just kept a spare t5 laying around and swapped em every couple months cause every now and then when i would bang third if it hooked up it would rip the gear apart. i drove that thing all over the place with no 3rd and i didnt take the chunks out, i even raced the car with no 3rd shifting from 2nd to 4th. if you absolutly need to use the car u should be fine taking out the chunks and not going to third.

Right now the only thing is it seems pretty tempting to put a magnet on a stick and try to get the pieces out that way. One tooth came out on the drain plug. Easier than pulling it out.

maybe flush it a couple of times? saves getting the tranny out altogether

Wow, so, the starter bolts hated me. I mean, they really had a bug up their ass. I could say those two last bolts took about as long as putting the tranny back in, getting it bolted up, and doing the driveshaft. The PPF wasn't cooperating either. C'est la vie.

And for my trouble?

The car seems to be fine. I got PILES of teeth out - I think I got everything loose bigger than a half a BB out, certainly 95% of it. But there's maybe 4 nubs of fractional teeth on both shafts, so when driving along (if the car is moving) there's a random but constant whacking. Maybe the bits will break off over time. Hard to say. It seems to drive ok but I sure feel conspicuous. Guess I'll just drive it. Pics to follow