I had an 86 4Runner with an auto trans worked absolutly fine on and off road, (it was a turbo though) took it everywhere or anywhere I wanted, just a few locations I went with it: Rubicon, (did skip the sluice) Los Coyotes, (did el hill and went down to bagbys rock) some awsome trail in Arizona with the Mesa 4Wheelers, (can't remeber the name something like upper and lower woodpecker or peckerwood or such) Ackybreaky, Doran Canyon and so on and on. Never had any problems with the trans at all sold it with 245,000 on the od and never had to even rebuild it. I did notice that once the motor aged it no longer wanted to climb steep hills with large rocks. It was well set up with lockers front and rear, 4.88 gears, downey/rancho/procomp suspension, lots of armor, 33'sx11.50 tires, and the auto trans which is like having a "Marlin Crawler" type gear reduction which I called auto gear reduction. The only down side would be on the down side of any hill does not have any engine braking for the most part but I would just use enough e-brake to slow it down without sliding. This was before SAS was common which is what I would go with if I did another IFS Yota, but never did I fear 3wheelin' with my IFS. I loved my auto and am in the process of swapping out my 4 speed for and auto in my Willys.