Originally Posted by MrSelfDestruct

Not necessarily. Once you have an appointment, you should be able to have your car back in a few hours. If you take it to a transmission place like Aamco, they can probably tell you what's wrong with it in less than two hours, assuming they have the equipment to inspect an old transmission like that. If it is bad, you might want to consider getting a new 5-speed or 6-speed that will get you significantly better gas mileage than the old thing in there, unless you're planning to keep it stock.