Bought a used 5 speed and it's kinda trashed. What would you do?
 

Backstory:
* I have a 9 MR
* I've wanted to swap a 5 speed in for a while
* I finally found one!
* I paid 3k for it
* I had it shipped to TRE for a rebuild before putting it in the car

Now what:
* TRE wants $6200-ish to rebuild the transmission
* Apparently the contents of the transmission are basically useless. Here's the report TRE sent back

Disclaimers:
* I trust TRE is telling the truth and I'd get a similar estimate from any of the other reputable transmission shops.
* I'm not necessarily trying to put the seller on blast as he just bought some car and parted it out and almost certainly didn't disassemble the transmission etc first.

My options, I think:
* Eat the loss. Sell the case for parts. Try to find another one, which might have the same problem.
* Try to get the seller to give some of the $$ back. This doesn't seem likely. I'm sure it will be something like "oh come on you can't expect a 100k trans to be perfect", etc etc.
* Do the rebuild anyway. There aren't that many 5 speeds kicking around and my 6 speed might die someday.

With the Evo used part market the way it is, what would y'all do? I do want a 5 speed but this is going to end up something like 10k installed. I can't do a dogbox, etc because I want to stay legal for STU.

Quite the dilemma, but if it were me id bite the bullet and just pay for the rebuild. Having spent 3k it sucks because you'd expect it to be in good working order but as you stated, 5 spd trans are getting very rare period. It seems like alot but honestly these cars are getting to that point where this type of money needs to be spent. Selling for parts and trying to find another, you just risk being in the same position again, may take even longer to find. The days of finding cheap rebuilds and having 3 spare cores on the side are over. tre is the best and it will be money well spent. Just my opinion.

You bought a core. Ask the seller for half your money back and rebuild it.

It be one thing of it was in need of a normal rebuild and maybe a couple extra things. But that trans was clearly ****ed.

$3k is a "good trans" price. That's clearly not what you got.

+1

What Sean said, $3k for a ****ed trans is highway robbery. Send the seller the report you got from TRE if he tries to dispute it. If he just bought the car to part out then he shouldn't have an issue with giving you some money back because there is no way he'd be able to know the condition of the trans.

Meh, I'm 8k into my built 6 speed(in a box in my room, not installed) so spend the money now and focus on how super awesome fresh parts are.

It pretty much makes B&M prices seem reasonable knowing you'll get what you expect up front. I think I saw today they posted a trans with 4.11 used for about 1000miles for 6k, no core charge.

Sorry you got beat up on this one. But goes right along with my worries about the whole platform long term. Things are way to rare and expensive anymore. What did a fully OEM 5-speed cost 5 years ago from the factory?

Edit: Here we go, https://www.tmzperformance.com/shop/...sion-2500a123/

That seems cheap at this point :(

Yeah it's terrifying overall. It starts to make an STR ND look a lot more appealing.

I found the transmission you meant I think - yeah, 6k from TRE, 1k miles.

In defense of the seller, it did include the extra bits to do the swap (shifter cables etc). But this still sucks.

(seller, shockingly, was not interested in any kind of partial refund.)