Bmr4life

I'm planning on buying a used trans and wanted to make sure it was str8 before putting it in my max cause trans troubles seems to be its curse. I know i'd have to replace the clutch pads and gaskets and stuff, not sure how many or where they are. but how much would it cost and how labor intensive is it? I plan on having someone else do the actual swap for me, I just want to do the rebuild myself. thank you

also, how hard is it to replace auto trannies? are special tools needed?

JeffesonM

iTrader: (5)

From what I understand, the auto tranny is one of the most complex things in our cars (or any car, for that matter). I'd recommend you leave it to the pros.

Bmr4life

dang, the exact opposite of what i wanted to hear.

sryth

It'd cost much more than a 5spd swap

Seriously, though...the swap is the easy part...I wouldn't even open an auto tranny. The image of opening a watch to have all of the internals spring out all over the place comes to mind.

That's an over-exaggeration, but it's a very complicated piece of machinery.

Bmr4life

ok, so how hard is it to do the swap? Do i need any special tools or is a good wrench with a breaker bar good enough to get the job done?

sryth

Are you sticking with an auto, or are you going to make the swap over to 5spd?

Bmr4life

sticking with auto.

maxima98vspec

yea auto tranny's are kind of complex if u don't know what ur doing, but manual i think are the easiest thing to rebuild on any car, u just have to know what ur doing, i can rebuild one with my eyes closed, i think i would run you a couple of houndred to rebuild it ur self, and if u know what ur doing, if not yea like others said take it to the pros. Ijust got done rebuilding a maunal on a 93 maxima earlier today, it was preaty easy.

ABK

how come? 5spd is funner. Well I pulled a tranny from a 350 before, it wasn't hard, but that's chevy.

I would imagine that you need to take out the axles, disconnect all the sensors and **** like that, drain the tranny, prolly remove the support bracket from underneath (correct me if I'm wrong), and then disconnect it from the engine block.

Bmr4life

thats what i was thinking. seems doable but just wanted to make sure there wasn't some more stuff hidden i didn't know about.

ABK

Talk to Jay25 I think he lives somewhere around you. He is a master technician, and he did alot of swaps on Maximas.

sryth

If you're gonna attempt to do the swap yourself, go get a Haynes/Chilton's book. It'll walk you through it.

All things considered, though, if you're going to get the tranny rebuilt, just have a shop do the whole job. It'll only run you ~$200 (in my area, anyhow) more to have them R&R the tranny, and any warranty from that shop on the rebuild will be intact.

Most places won't warranty a rebuild if you install the tranny yourself.

maxima98vspec

no, no need to take the support bracket from underneath the motor, the tranny will clear and just drop down as soon as u pull the input shaft from the flywheel/crank shaft, or u can remover the bracket and have the u would have to support the motor by something but the bracket helps u with that, just have to remove the axles, the slave cylinder, un plug 1 sensor(back up light switch) and i ground i think, and the transaxle mount.

Nismo

iTrader: (18)

[QUOTE=Bmr4life]I plan on having someone else do the actual swap for me, I just want to do the rebuild myself. thank you

QUOTE]

If you need someone to take it off for you then I dont think your ready to rebuild it yet. Its doable but its a big headache.

sryth

A little anecdote:

My bearings failed in my tranny some time back. I figured I'd save my self some money (at the expense of time/trouble) by removing the transmission, bringing it to a shop and having them do the repair. Once they were done (all new bearings, all new seals), I installed it myself and drove my car. Problem fixed, I was very happy.

About a month later, my transmission totally died. I mean it melted. The transmission basically started leaking from the axle-seals. I didn't notice even any drops on the ground where I would park, so I assume this failure occurred very quickly.

Now, I brought my transmission back to the shop that did the bearings/seals. They basically said "That sucks...looks like your gonna need a new tranny." They are in a position to claim it was the installation that screwed things up; not good from where I'm standing.

It would've cost another ~$200 to have them actually pull the tranny. If I had paid them to do this, they couldn't blame me for anything. I would be driving my car instead of looking all over the earth for a new transmission.

As it turns out, I'd still have an open-diff whereas now I have a VLSD unit, but hey, sometimes bad situations turn out great.

Moral of the story: Take it to a shop and have them do it. Then there is only 1 person to blame when things go wrong.

Bmr4life

I'm goign to just have Jay25 do the swap for me and plan on buying the trans for 96sleeper. hopefully all will go well and my max will finally act right.

BadKarma99-4spd

iTrader: (4)

if you were actually able to pull off a diy auto tranny rebuild, you could walk around here as **** of the walk with your brass ***** clanking togther.

when they rebuilt my auto they took me back to see it torn down, ive never seen so many pieces of a car in one place, i think i recognized 4 parts out of the several dozens of pieces. he then proceded to explain what all they were by they end my eyes were just glazed over

Bmr4life

lol, yeah i say my tranny dismantled when the guy at AAMCO was explaining all the bad things there were in it. there are like 10 little clutch discs, the torque can't be cleaned out, so it must be replaced if it gets bad stuff in it. he also explained how my VB had miniature pistons in it and that it had little specs of metal in it making it bind up. etc, it was a sh*t load of pieces though.