Transmission Help

[zman8537]

I need some serious help here. I will go over the entire scenario. I bought an 87 MR2 with bad head gasket about 1 1/2 to 2 years ago. It ran but smoked and anti-freeze ran out of the exhaust. I Drove it for about 100 yards to where I parked it. It sat until about a month ago when I had it towed and started an engine swap with a JDM small port engine that I bought off of E-bay. I cleaned evertthing up before putting everything back together, replaced all seals and gaskets in the engine to be safe and installed a new front seal in the automatic transmission. Got engine and trans all installed and turned the key tonight and with a little adjusting of the distributor she fired right up and sounds pretty good. The problem is nothing seems to be going on with the transmission. I checked the fluid and it looks like it was overfull so I drained some out and still nothing. I went over in my head everything that I can think of. Bolted up torque converter, hooked up all the linkages, What am I missing?????? The transmission being overfilled has me puzzled a little bit as I can't imagine why it would be so overfilled. Could there be some valves or a valve sticking in the trans????? Could the front pump have gone bad?????? Any help or suggestions on things to check or to help diagnose my problem would be greatly appreciated. The only other thing that ran through my head, but I feel quite sure that it can't be, it is that the engine that I installed was a standard shift engine but I installed all the parts and spacers and stuff from the automatic onto the JDM engine.. HELP!!!!!!! I was already to take it out for a little spin but no such luck...

[BrightTundra04]

did you check the level with the car running at normal temp?? If not thats why it showed it over filled ond now that you have tried to drive it there may not be enough fluid to get the clutches and valves to work properly.. Just a though..

[zman8537]

Yes I started it up got it up to operating temperature and tried putting it in gear and nothing happened, so I checked the fluid and this is when I found that the transmission was overfilled. I drained some out and still nothing. I have been racking my brains on this and can't believe that the transmission could have went bad just sitting there but I don't know. The fluid is clean doesn't look burnt or anything either. ???????????????????

[Gairloch]

You might want to check the Mk I forum on mr2oc.com.

I'd love to be able to help you as I completely understand your pain but I know little about Mk I's and less about automatic transmissions.

[zman8537]

OOPs, First thanks to all that took the time to think about what could be wrong with the tranny, but I figured it out after racking my brains and then I called a guy that does some tranny work and said the same thing that Fogjammer suggested. I knew that I did not bust the ears off of the pump but figured that the pump is just not working. So this evening I pulled the transmission out and checked the ears on the pump, still intact and looks OK. Then I started doing some inspecting and OOOPs, it appears that someone put the flex-plate on backwards. I feel like a nitwit but I guess that is what you get when you get in a hurry sometimes. Well I flipped it around and noticed that one of the flywheel bolts had a tread or two that did not look too good so I will try to pick a couple up tomorrow and start putting it back together. I should be getting pretty good at this. It only took about an hour and a half to get it out. So with the flywheel being on backwards when I tightened up the torque converter bolts it pulled the torque converter out of the pump ears and was not making any contact. Thanks again and I can see that I will be spending some time on this new-found site. Ron

[Gairloch]

Whoops