Also known as: j160, ra62, ra63, ra60, ra61, toyota 6-speed rear-drive manual
Toyota's rear-drive six-speed manuals — the J160 in the Altezza and IS200, and the RA6x in the IS250, the Tacoma and the FR-S.
⚑ They replaced the W-series and feel nothing like it. The W58 is a long-throw truck-derived gearbox; the J160 was designed against European six-speeds and has a short, close action. A complaint that one feels notchy against a W58 is comparing two different design intents.
Second-gear synchroniser wear is the pattern on the J160, reported as a baulk when cold and downshifting — and it is genuinely wear rather than fluid on this family, unlike most of Toyota's manuals.
The RA62 is Aisin's design and appears in vehicles as different as a Lexus saloon and a Tacoma pickup, which is why its material is scattered across two very different owner communities.
Toyota's own gear oil is specified for both, and it is thinner than a generic 75W-90 — the wrong oil produces exactly the cold baulk that gets diagnosed as synchroniser wear.
Cars fitted with this gearbox
2 generations. Only where a source names the model and the generation together — a gearbox is documented as a product far more often than as a fitment, so this list is deliberately shorter than the truth.
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
Community experience
Be the first to write this up
Nothing posted about this yet. Whatever you found is worth writing down — even a dead end saves someone the same afternoon.
What makes one worth reading:
- The car — make, model, year and engine. The same fault behaves differently on each.
- What you measured, not only what you replaced.
- What actually fixed it — or that nothing did, which is worth knowing too.
Sign in or create an account to add what you found about J160 / RA62.