Im dying HERE! :roflpuke2:


Thank You I needed that before going to bed :tup:

what oil should I use??

I am seeing Trips tonight.

Real Men ™ also don't use SynchroRevMatch to pretend they know how to downshift accurately, don't use power steering because they don't have girly arms, don't use ABS brakes because they can threshold brake on any surface at any time just fine on their own, don't have car audio systems (especially upgraded ones!) because they'd rather listen to the engine any day, don't have air conditioning (you're gonna waste engine power because you're too much of a pansy to enjoy a warm day?), and they certainly don't have in-dash navigation systems because they don't need goddamn directions from anyone. Oh yeah, and they probably don't drive wimpy import V6's either. So if your Z is how you define your manhood, you were in trouble long before you decided on a transmission.

PLain and simply i don't drive a manual to make my **** bigger it's fine the way it is, but I have a HELL of a lot more fun with my manual rev match or not than any automatic. Everyone i know with an automatic Z wishes they had a real manual trans at least a few times. You want the auto day today or when you are at the strip, but you bought an enthusiast car and didn't order the option that is the most fun, 2 grand cheaper, and you don't need to throw $6k at to get it to hold 500hp.

Edit: everyone who does a forced induction or track build on an auto gets to sit there and wonder how much power and abuse will it take before it goes to **** an needs to be sent to a dealer to replace because the tcm is coded to the ecu, and wont work in another car, and is inside the transmission.

The manhood arguement! Who's going to mention the 7at is marginally faster?

Besides we all know real men drive automatic V8s. They're also poor so they get no options.

what kind of transmission do airplanes have?

I guess AT guys would fly around in circles since they only use their right foot.

Hopefully its nothing like the MT in the 370Z or it will have a failing CSC.

No point in this continued argument. The m/the boys will never see the light until the day there aren't any left to buy. No one wants them anymore other than a few here on this forum thinking they are better somehow. There was a point and time about 30 years ago when there was the advantage of the m/t but technology has turned the tide again them. Sorry boys and girls, the auto is better and will continue to dominate. You are arguing a losing battle with no added benefit from the old, dilapidated, time consuming system that you use.

...so...

how much are we talking about here to get a tranny swap from an A/T to a M/T

As you stare into your AT Crystal Ball, when exactly do you foresee that will happen? I would wager I will be converting my 280Z to an electric before I convert it to an AT so I don't see MT disappearing from this earth before I do. :tiphat:

I don't, and you kinda know me now :)

Who gets to define fun here? I find carving corners to be fun, and you can do that in any car. The Z happens to be a nice car to do it in, but the transmission choice doesn't really affect that. More likely than not, someday I'll spin this car into a tire wall or have a catastrophic mechanical failure, and I'll have some hard choices to make about repairing it back the way it was, dropping in a completely different drivetrain, or scrapping it and eventually starting a new track-car project. While all that's going on, I'll probably pick up a cheap used 90's Spec Miata or something to take to track events so I can keep having fun while I sort out the Z situation. At the end of the day it's just driving, and any sporty car is fun to drive (even a manual! :p)

$1300 cheaper.

Doing a track-reliable/driveable 500hp FI build of this car is going to cost you so much time and money (on top of all the time and money everyone sinks into an NA track car) that a $6K trans upgrade on top isn't a big factor. I wouldn't go down that road to begin with though, because I'm not rich enough to afford to be able to do it right.

Sure you can buy a cheap turbo kit for $6-8K, but making a car like that reliable enough to flog the crap out of it all weekend 8-12 times a year (or more!) and not have it spend 3/4 of it's life sitting in shop after shop trying to fix it back up after the latest failure... you're gonna have to pay people that really know what they're doing a lot of money over a long time one way or another.

$6K for trans upgrades? I think I spent $6K just on my coilovers and BBK (actually, more :shakes head:). Hell I've spent way more than $6K on just tires, wheels, and brake pads over the past few years.

At some point down the magical road to a track-prepped, reliable 500HP VQ, you'd probably realize it would've been way cheaper, more reliable, and more fun to have just bought yourself a used 2009 ZR1 'vette (or hell, even a new 2013). It's about the same base weight before you start gutting things, and they're out in the 650+ hp range bone stock. Not that all decisions have to be pragmatic. Feel free to go build an expensive unicorn, it sounds fun. But I'm just saying, don't bring the pragmatism of the cost of upgrading a 7AT into this...

My track build is still kicking. The car's 5 years old now with somewhere north of 40K miles on it. I haven't tried to sort out the math from the era when it used to be street-driven and my log of past events, but I'd ballpark that at this point at least 5K of those are track miles. Track miles are hard on any car, they add up quick. Even on the ridiculously expensive but awesome Nismo RC version of our car, the recommended replace/rebuild interval on the engine is 10K track miles, IIRC.

The transmission has bugs (I should probably check for flash updates at the dealer for my 2009 TCM actually, it might solve a few bugs), but it's still kicking *** in spite of all the track abuse. It's not that hard to go ask a dealer to reprogram TCM stuff to mate a new trans if you had to. Honestly, I probably wouldn't, though. I'd either have a good AT shop rebuild mine and make it stronger and better, or I'd think about replacing the whole drivetrain (or the whole car!) with something else.

The argument ended when Jeremy Clarkson stopped complaining about "flappy paddle gearboxes". If that guy can let it go anybody can let it go (although I was a bit surprised to see a few posts on here about DCT being "better" just because a torque converter is not involved... not always a better option -- see further the terrible DCT on the veloceter).

The Top Gear guys don't bother with that complaint anymore because virtually every performance car they test has some form of manumatic.

This is starting to resemble the kind of argument among audiophiles... everybody who likes the Victrola can play their way -- with hisses and pops -- (while still available...) and everybody down with mp3's can have fun in their own fashion.

I give it less than 25 years. Much less. Every serious performance car has a manumatic of some sort, no real motorsport uses anything resembling a traditional standard, and for many exotics it isn't even on the menu. It will become exclusively an economy option and then eventually eliminated entirely. It will be as easy to find as a carburetor on a new car.

Well before everyone has electric car, that's for sure.

I'll repost this in 2039 right after I buy my 550Z with a 10 speed MT. :tup:

Ha ha -- ok, looking forward. I'm always willing to admit when I'm wrong :tup:

I don't see manuals disappearing any time soon but I think Jordo! is right that they will become mainly econo-box options and hi-po cars will steadily move toward automatics and shift-by-wire DCT-type (might as well be an auto) transmissions.

But a manual can sure be a lot more fun to drive under the right conditions. There will always be the diehards that will insist on a manual, no matter how much "better" the autos have become. :)

Met a young hottie who liked my car and wanted to sit in it, I told her she cam drive it around the parking lot. She said she cannot drive a manual shift. Then I told her it was an automatic.

She was VERY happy. None of this staring at a goat who can't drive a 'real' sports car. The transmission alone does not make the entire car.

BTW I hate the manual shift in my Subaru!

.................not sure if serious.


but hey if the swap invovles an amuse part then just triple the cost of a regular swap. seems to be par for the course.

:facepalm:

Not so sure I'd get involved with a young hottie who can't handle a stick. Just sayin'! :bowrofl:

Yea but your right hand is free with the auto and the hot tie in your car!!

I googled "tranny swap" and wow there are indeed web pages dedicated to swapping the transmissions around!

But don't, don't, DON'T click on google images after running that search. There are no transmissions pictured. It's.... horrible.

its not like your right hand is glued to the shifter in a manual, that isnt even a valid point.

For my Z, I chose a manual over the AT for the simple reason that I enjoy driving MT cars. Whenever I've bought a car, if there is a manual transmission available, I would select it.

This. I understand the automatic is faster, smoother, etc... but there's just something about engaging the gears by hand that makes it so much more fun for me.

The answer lies right in the 370z sales brochure:

6MT - designed for perfectionists
7AT - designed for enthusiasts

both are good

You just described a Shelby Cobra, haha.

They both suck. I hope the next Z comes with CVT.

:icon18:

Gosh no!! Nissan wouldn't do that to use.

Maybe it'll be real easy...the answer has been in front of us all this time....


http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/s/shift.jpg

I agree with the argument for a manual transmission in that sports cars and stick shifts naturally go together. I have never chosen an automatic in the dozens of sports cars I've owned....

Then, one day I drove a paddle shift 370z and fell in love with it. For me, it's the best of both worlds. I never drive with the car in D and get to enjoy all the fun of changing gears on my terms, upshifting and downshifting.

My only gripes with automatic in the 370 is that
A. Technically not serviceable according to service manual (i.e. throw away part)
B. Automatics are evolving so fast the current one will be considered old tech soon.
C. Anyone can drive it
D. Can't take the power that a manual with an upgraded clutch can.
E. More expensive
F. For me; not nearly as fun as a manual. If the 370 is ur DD beater then AT makes sense, otherwise a waste.

I can see the auto as being useful in a very traffic jam prone city, but if you live anywhere with open roads/ low traffic it's a waste.

That's true of a lot of things on the 370 and other modern cars, unfortunately. Same is true for the VVEL heads on our engine. They're not considered repairable at the dealership; any small problem and you just buy new ones and stick them on.

Again, true of everything lately in the car world. But the 7AT is by far one of the best true autos (as in, torque-convertor, etc) around. On a lot of other modern cars the automatic isn't really track-worthy at all, whereas the 370Z's 7AT is pretty awesome on the track. I've lost count of how many times a rider or instructor has jumped in my car and done some variation of "An auto??.. :(" followed by "This thing is awesome :)" a couple laps into it.

Kind of elitist? But no, not anyone can drive anything.

This car doesn't really need much more power than it comes with or that the 7AT can handle; the rest is only really useful for bragging rights and drag-racing, IMHO. With bolt-ons the car's power is a very good match for the rest of the car. Maybe a 15% bump to ~350-ish on a conservative dyno would be nice, if there were an easy way to obtain that. But still, even in the low 300's on a conservative dyno, this car will easily go into an oversteer slide in any gear, even with very sticky tires.

Also, like your clutch (and CSC), the 7AT is upgradeable. It does cost a bit more to upgrade, though, and the options are more-limited.

You may have a point there. This is me poking along in a city traffic jam in my 7AT a week ago in my DD beater:

Freakin' A, bro! That is bad a$$!

They got that the wrong way around if you ask me.

yup definitely got that backwards it should be

6MT - designed for aftermarket F.I.
7AT - designed to have your wallet thrown at it

I thought I was a die hard manual fan. I was talking to my father's doctor the other day who is a huge car enthusiast. I was asking if he has seen the new Alpha 4C. He said he wouldn't even think of buying one because it isn't offered with a manual transmission. I was surprise because he is a huge Alpha fan and has a couple vintage ones. I crack up because his DD is a Lotus Elise. He laughed when I mentioned that it is going to get hard to even find a car with 3 pedals and said he is just going to have to buy used. I'm not that bad, I'd take that Alpha even if it had a CVT.

I still like shifting my stick anytime in a sports car!:ugh2:

M/T guys are so skilled. They can play with a stick and run their mouths at the same time.