welcome to the site, I'm a believer in keeping cars well beyond the normal experation date.

thanks everyone for the warm welcome :) and yeah its 350 km, the car is still in very good shape with the exception of the transmission, the only rust on the car is right below the gas cover where the paint got lifted from spilling gas and got rusted there. i'll post some pics today :)

heyy! welcome to the forum! keep that baby going but yeahh i hate it when people dont take care of their cars and then you get them and need to fix them up. but hey its worth it =]

just uploaded some pictures, go check them out..

car pics look good, very nice lookin 96 monte!!!

welcome to the forum, and more importantly welcome to the $400 5th gen club, lol. :D

even with the tranny issues, you got yourself a great looking car.

before you replace it, top off the fluid & try adding some transmission honey stuff... idk what it was called exactly but a friend dumped a thing of it in his old escort ( horrible trannys in them, btw)... anyway, the escort was having similar problems that you are, & the transmission stuff got the car to shift like new.... which was freekin amazing, concedering what kinda crap we had put it through, lol.