The V6 manual is stronger then the 4 cyl unit by a good margin.

The 4 cyl manual is good for most applicaions but if you add tall tires and a turbo and then throw in towing it wont last very long.

When fresh the manual tranny is just as quite as the auto. With age the bearings can / will get noisy. New gears produce metal and the bearings get hurt when they run through it. Once a used unit is rebuilt the bearings tend to last longer since the gears have already been run in.

The later lockup autos get better highway fuel economy the early 4 cyl autos. The early 4 cyl auto converter slips a lot with larger tires at highway speeds.

The upside is its a very tough unit.

I went with an auto on my current Raider. At times I miss having a stick but my daily driver is a manual soooooo I went with the auto for the Raider. It was great to have and an auto when I broke my foot last fall <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/rodent.gif" alt="" /> Driving a stick with a cast on is not recomended.

Other than fuel economy around town is not quite as good I'm pretty happy with the setup. It has been putting up with 12 PSI of boost for a couple of years.

I did change two things on my 4 cyl auto. The first was I got a set of lower transfer case gears from AU to give it a better crawl and the other was I swapped in the V6 lockup tranny from a mid 1990. The bell housing / front case is removable on the auto. The 4 cyl flex plate bolts up to the V6 converter making it a very easy swap.

Kevin