Do they want to fix the tranny or replace it for that price?

Check with a real transmission shop. They only work with transmissions. How often does a dealer ever get to work on transmissions? The proof is that they even told you that they never saw that before.

As an example, on my Civic I needed to have a lot of the bearings replaced in the transmission, the Honda dealer wanted 10 hours of labor at 75$C/hour plus parts, but they could not tell me which which bearing until they open it. So 750$.

At a transmission shop, they charged me 500$ for labor and 250$ for the bearings. Before openning the tranny, the transmission was able to tell me which bearing was gone from the symptoms and experience. Once openned up, he was right. So the cost of labor at the dealer paid for the complete job at a specialty shop.

Anything major like this, I stay away from the dealers unless it`s on warranty. I prefer to leave it to specialists. If you need brain surgery you don`t see your family doctor, you see a specialist. I am not saying the dealers are no good, well some are, but it is more that when it comes to complex problems like this, they don`t work on them on a daily basis so they don't have the experience and expertise.

Hope you can get it fixed for cheaper than that.

My 2 cents,
56kz2slow