Take it to the local guy and develop a relationship. Tell him the situation and ask him if you can watch and learn alittle about the car. Slow time of the year so he may be ok with it. Sounds like more than one trouble and he should be able to get right to them.

Anyone know which tranny this is???

Carefull with that tranny, my son has one, he stopped suddenly in a Target parking lot when someone backed out at him. The tranny downshifted and broke something inside, stalled the engine and froze it. He called me after he managed to start it to describe the noise -no fun and $4000 later he was lucky the pieces didn't break the housing.