Help with an 86.

Alright I have a chance to buy an 86 Supra for $1000-$1200. Theres just a few problems and I want to know if anybody out there can tell me if its worth all my time and money. First big problem for me, I cant imagine buying a car like this without having the thrill of running through the gears manually and unfortunately this car is an auto. Does anybody know about how much itd cost to put a manual in and maybe where I can find a list of all the parts I might need. 2nd thing is I test drove it today and I already knew the tranny had problems but they werent exactly what the guy had said. He had told me that it was not going into third. When I drove it it actually felt like and sounded like it went into third fine, but when I went to take off again it dogged pretty heavy. I actually think its staying in third or possibly just not shifting back to low. Thats actually not the problem since my cousin owns a transmission shop. The problem is that we went to get keys out of my dads vehicle to take it to his shop and overlook it and upon exiting the vehicle smelled that nasty smell of overflowing antifreeze. We parked the car and the owner came out of his house. He said that it had overheated on him once before like this. He thought it was the transmission that was doing this, and assured us it had never overheated before. I was somewhat skeptical. Has anybody everheard of somebody's Supra doing this? Also how cheap can I find door panels and possibly some dashboard panels. The previous owner tried to install a cd player and busted up that part of the console/dash, whatever you might call it. Also the ac/accesory buttons are pretty faded. Id just like know how much i could replace those for. Any help anybody could supply me with I would be extremely grateful for. Ive wanted to get one of these cars for what seems like forever, but am afraid that this car might just be a wast of my time and money the way its looking now. Thanks again

First I'd like to direct you to the search button...
http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/search.php?
it's very usefull because if you would have used it you would have answered 3/4 of your post. Second welcome to the forum. As for everything else that can't be found by a two second search I'll answer, what year is it exactly, 1986 or 1986.5?. The only replacment for the flakey a/c buttons is either find a perfect condition -88 unit and swap the entire thing, or find a 89+ unit and swap it, it looks better and the buttons will never flake like the earlier version. The dash bezel (big rubbery black peice) can easily be swapped out with another one, just a few screws and it's done. Just call the local junkyards and see what they have, check Ebay, and check here and Supraforums for members parting out MKIII's. As for the coolant, it could be BHG, do all the tests for it and you will know.

It is an '86. Thanks for the help man. I think ebay is probably my best bet since I live in the midwest. There arent a whole lot of supras sitting in junk yards, if any. Ill probably still check a few out though. In fact I think this is this first Supra Ive seen in probably 4 years that was actually owned by somebody in the area. Anyways thanks for the help, and the direction to the search board.