Another successful vr swap done, I have a 2013 RWD sedan journey and around a month and a half ago my valve body and tcm randomly went out, all be it there were symptoms like crazy and hard shift flare in 3 and 4. I was already anticipating it to eventually go out and was already planning a vr swap in the future. So I got my tranny off ebay and only paid $461 and some change with free residential shipping. The tranny had 94k which I wasn't really concerned about as for a tranny that's pretty cheap and I'm sure I coulda found a lower millage ($200 dollar difference) one but this car was my daily and I'm not rich at all so I was kind of on a time crunch as my vq tranny just suddenly went out. Also for some reason vq trannies for 12/13 are like $800 to $1k and idk why. I got the vq tranny out in a day and was just waiting on the vr to arrive. When It arrived It was in good condition an was only missing the trans mount and luckily the vq trans mount and the vr trans mount are the same so no worries there.

Now the first actual issue I came across had nothing to do with the tranny but actually the clearance needed to get the trans up under the car... I had four 3 ton jack stands at max height and it was not enough to get the trans under the car. I kid you not it took almost 8 hours across 2 days just to get it under there. I unbolted the bell housing and even then I had to tilt it on its side with the trans jack attached and slid it under there but it worked.


The second issue was I had to remove the wheels on the trans jack to get more space so when I finally got it under the car it had no wheels...and as you can imagine trying to get a heavy *** trans in place is just not the move guys. So now I had to put the wheels back on was a pain but we got it and made our lives easier. If you know anyone with a lift or you have one PLEASE USE IT as life will be easier. Also I wont be going over everything like drilling a hole for the crank senor or any other mods to the trans as there are plenty of vids detailing what to do, I'm just giving my experience. So after all that bs we get to finally installing the trans, everything bolts up directly except the bottom four bolts as they don't align with the vr trans but no worries you'll be fine with the 8 trans bolt in there. ALSO medium strength tread locker and a torque wrench is a must just as a peace of mind so you know its not going to loosen because of vibrations, also make sure your torque converter is installed correctly or the trans will not seat properly. I did the rear diff drop method for my driveshaft as this was a budget swap and it went smoothly.


Now my biggest concern was the swapping of tcms as almost every person says you need to swap the tcms, now as you have read my vq one has went and new one will cost $2400 and with labor like $3k so that's not happening. There are claims and videos saying that they did not swap tcms but these were mostly Q50s not Gs so I was taking a gamble at it working. But IT WORKED, without swapping tcms everything worked fine except you wont have DS mode but I always drive in manual mode so I didn't care about that. It will shift like a vr though in Drive so if you use Drive get used to it shifting early. But no weird noises or any weird problems so I can confirm it will work without a tcm swap. Now I have a hypothesis as to why it works, 12-13 Gs and 14-15 Q50s all can use the vq trans between them is needed to swap but you CANNOT use a 08-11 trans on a 12-13 G as there is some difference that wont allow that. I am only speculating that the vr tcm can work with 12-13 Gs and 14-15 Q50s, AGIAN THIS IS ONLY SPECULATION.

I will provide a good vid for removing the vq trans if you've never done it.
Also there's a shop called Full Throttle Performance 916 based out in cali that has done alot of these swaps and they also said they never done a tcm swap when doing a vr trans swap. I did not go to them as I live in Georgia and did this in my driveway so please guys do not be scared to attempt this swap by yourself.
You might need so extra tools if you don't have them but it wont cost you a arm and a leg to get them if needed. I also got a torque solutions trans mount as I did not want to cut the crossmember because I did not know how to weld nor want a fat space in my crossmember. The new mount fit in without having to modify the crossmember.

VQ trans removal vid-
Cost Breakdown
If you have the tools literally just the cost of the trans, in my case $461
with Poly trans mount $640
Now with everything else like things needed to cut and drill and other items it was around $720 total cost.
SO VR TRANS SWAP FOR UNDER $800 AND NO TCM SWAP.