A beautiful 86 GL in the junkyard has a 5 speed dual range trans still in it. The car looks great, not rusty, not wrecked, no apparent reason for it to be on the junkyard. So the big question is, at 168k miles, what bit the dust? The engine or the transmission? Is it worth me spending a few hours and a couple hundred bucks to get the trans and linkages to possibly do a swap?

the-timing-belt-broke. old car, ot driven much, aged, and then the original factory belt let go. this is what i presume. any ea82 in the junkyrd with a broken timing belt is a guaranteed runner.

The upulits in our area get them at auctions and donations. Saw a really pretty SVX last year. The seats are now in my Toyota pickup. What a shame.

timing belt and clutch are two likely reasons for it to be there.

 

check or drain the oil from the trans - if it looks normal i'd assume it's good.

 

guess it depends on area, in some areas - like Maryland DC/metro suburbs area, that isn't worth more than scrap, most of them went to yard years ago there. other areas they rust away so fast the market for 80's vehicles is small. out west the thing might be worth a lot. but it's likely any costly repair, even if it's rather simple could send it heading for the yards.

I was only looking at it from a dual range swap point of view.

Did the old transmissions have the issue with the main roller bearing wearing out? Seems to me I read a while ago that they were not as prone to that because the main shaft had an extra bearing right behind the input shaft seal.

 

Not like I need to do another transmission swap right now, but the DR idea has crossed my mind several times in the past few months. I might just have to go back and grab it this weekend. :-p