Tranny For Towing?

[willydoit]

hey all. shopping for a 97-98 jx with plans to use it for around town short commutes and occasional trips to cabin with atv on light trailer(<less than 600 lbs total). wondering if anyone can speak to whether auto or stick would be more durable for towing. most everything i can find has at least 75000 on it so i'm curious about clutch wear,etc. would prefer auto but can live with the stick if its a better match for the usage. learning a bunch from the posts so just wanted to say thanks to everyone who takes the time to share what they know!

[Shconer]

My 93 is an automatic with 320000KM and my 94 is a manual with 285000KM there both tuff. The automatic would be good enough for a light trailer. Just be shure that is has good oil in it, you might want to do a flush (the oil cooler is intergrated into the radiator core), and change the filter. Keep the radiator clean. Try not to rev it at high speed for extended period of time, it will overheat especially in hot conditions and high loads. Its pretty much bullitproof, I've never towed anything with the automatic but I beat the **** out of it. Keep in mind you'll gain a gear with the manual, but you'll lose a torq converter. As far as clutch wear goes the stock clutch is pretty soft, it heats up quick especially when dumping it, and when hot wears rapidly, but as long as you drive normal and dont attamp't any brakestands, and match your rpms well it lasts a long time and is very forgiving.

[willydoit]

so its like most things in that a reasonable amount of maintenance and avoiding gratuitous abuse should keep it on the road with either tranny. the auto is mostly appealing to me because its easier to drink the morning coffee without stirring the stick, and even though ive been driving sticks since forever, i seem to be on the jerky side every time ive driven one of these(maybe this goes away once one gets used to the light clutch/accelerator feel). i appreciate the info as i was concerned about either tranny being a "weakest link" and needing an extraordinary amount of care.......wait a minute, brakestands?! with one of these? how many quarts of oil per tire to make that happen??? anyway, thanks for the reply, will be hoisting a fine fermented beverage in your general direction later today.

[Shconer]

If you rev it to about 6000rpm and dump the clutch one of the tires might start moving and once it starts heating up it'll start to rotate. Oils always good thou and some loose dirt. Just make sure your in 2WD! My automatic did them easy just rev it 4 or 5000rpm in nuetral and then drop into drive, and then 1st so it doesn't change gears. I plan on putting this clutch in it http://store.yahoo.com/cabrera/hpsclutchkits.html and doing some turbo work. http://www.turbinetech.ca/.