Toothpick T50

I've been to online forums many times and read that T50 gearboxes as "strong" as toothpicks and will break even with a bit of harsh treatment behind a stock 4A-GE. Never really believed that.. until just recently. A few days ago, i went to Jakarta to attend my sister's wedding. It was about 250 km of driving with the 4A-GE boosted on stock TD04H actuator. This was The Dog's first long ride after the turbo was running.  At first, everything went smooth. I shifted at moderate to high RPMs under full boost, enjoying how easy it was to overtake slow trucks and old-men drivers. Hell yeah, turbo FTW!

Then, after about two hours, the gearbox started to sound funny.. whining and popping occasionally. Gears would suddenly turn neutral when decelerating. Three hours in and it just got worse, there was horrible gear grinding sound and shifting gears got even more difficult. Finally, just 10 about more minutes left before i reach home, the gear was stuck on 4th! There was no way i can get home now. Called dad and he helped me tow the car to the nearest autoshop. It was 4AM in the morning so the shop was still closed. I left The Dog in front of the shop and left a note.

At 8AM the shop called me. I lazily woke up of bed and took my spare T50 gearbox (Oh yes, i have one. Everybody should have a spare gearbox lying on their front yard, right?) and head to the shop. Explained what happened and they started the swap.

Here's the spare already in.

Here's the KIA box. Resting in pieces.

With me having no more spare T50, mini-project W5X series gearbox conversion has officially started. These W55-W58 gearboxes are much stronger than T50. The input shaft are about 50% bigger and best of all, they're cheaper here than T50s! I'm now on the phase of gathering ideas from online forums to find the best way to tackle this.