Should I convert my 1987 430AE into a manual transmission?

I bought this bike for $500 and a friend of mine who knows a lot more about bikes then me has been helping out. We got the bike running, but the gears weren't catching. My friend did some kind of temporary repair just to get the bike to start, but he said there's a lot of "play" in the gears and he didn't reccomend even trying to ride the bike because it can get "messed up". This bike was a barn find almost and crankcase was left open for at least a year which could be part of the problem. Now he said he might be able to fix this, but he recommended converting it to a manual, because apparently the automatics have a lot of issues and aren't as fun. The gears and crankcase cover from a wr 430 should apparently fit right into the bike, as the AE is pretty much identical to the WR. And even though a 1987 wr 430 gears are hard to find and will cost a few bucks, I could probably sell the automatic gears and make a few bucks back. What would you do here?

1: put pics of your AE motor parts in order we try to see what's wrong.
Parts ( shoes, drums, freewheels...) are not easy to be found but can be found ( $)
You can try to repair it.
2: You can put an 430 cr/wr/xc in .It fits directly in the frame.

The autos are an amazing ride Mike but you need to know how to set them up or there will be tears and $$.
at the risk of being shot down in flames I would recommend doing what ol mate Michel says and find a complete 430 motor and wack her in and go riding. you will be able to sell the auto engine easily.

Other than that, buy another bike to ride while you spend time learning the auto rituals and secret psalms from the sages on this forum and become a bald, incense burning, robe wearing auto rider..... (I jest.... they don't burn incense!)

there are some good threads here on setting up the clutches and springs for reliability and a lot of other good oil on how to manage the auto bike but if your a rider and not a mad professor tinkerer (got a hat with a propeller on the top??) I would go with the manual engine.

Husky's are simple to work on and fun to ride

I talked to my friend today and got more specifics. He heard strange noises in the gears and when he opened the cover there were metal shavings on the bottom. He doesn't know the specific problem but doesn't want to chance blowing the bike up, especially when there's expensive parts in here. The engine top is completely clean, the pistons in great shape and there are no scratches or anything, it's like new almost so we want to keep that. What we are considering is changing the bottom. And a big factor in using the wr or cr bottom is the fact that the AE is almost impossible to find and will cost top dollar, I don't even know how I found this bike on Craigslist. I think the guy was trying to screw me over by charging $500, but I estimate the restore will cost about $500 more so he ended being the one being screwed over. The bike might lose value by being converted to a wr rather than an AE, but I think there's still a big profit to be made.

yes ! one modern HVA with a Rekluse Automatic System and you're ready to ride
but it's less fun