The Official Auto-to-Manual Transmission Swap Thread

[joe325i]

I havnt gotten that far yet.. I know I can sell my 3.91 diff... They fetch a nice price.
So far my costs are about 1100-1200? That dosnt include the trans cost because my dad picked it up for me.. I also overpaid for my flywheel... I also bought a SSK.. I think if you took your time on getting parts.. You could defidently do this swap for under 1g if you do the labor your self and already have the tools...
Its really not that hard.. The hardest part is getting the right parts, putting in the clutch pedal, and aligning the manual trans and not getting the starter cocked..

STill havnt gotten her started!
I got home from work too late, and the sun went down too fast.. So I have like 4 more bolts to go on the driveshaft.

[kryptokatalyst]

If I ended up doing the swap i would definitely do it myself. My dad owns a hotrod shop and i am very experienced and access to every tool imaginable. My only issue is the cost. I have to constitue spending the money for something i don't need, especially since i am saving for an e46 M3.

Definitely want to here how yours comes out though...keep up the post. Thanks man.

[joe325i]

Im pretty "mechaniclly" inclined.. I havnt had any experience with anything this big before..
Im just about done. It would have been done 4th of july like I planned.. But I was havin a hard time aligning the starter with the transmission, we got the dowel in but somehow the rest of the starter rotated, but we fixed it!

I only get to work on it for an hour or an hour and a half after work, and doing it by your self takes A LOT longer.. Today i got the driveshaft up and all torqued, as well as torqued down most of the exhaust except for 2 header bolts, and I have to attach those stupid "rubber bands" that hold up the mid section... Then I have to put the drive belt on and the radiator fan.. Then I'll start it up and hope nothing explodes!

I started on the write up today..
Honistly.. If you have the tools and make sure you have ALL the parts out ahead of time, and lay everything out and do everything in steps, and most of all take your time, its not really that hard of a swap.
I'll try and get the write up done by next week so you can see how it goes, if you got any questions drop me an email joe325i@gmail.com or send me an instant message my SN is dabomb4956.

[joe325i]

Finnished the car tonight!
And it started up right away!!!
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWHOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Drives really well! Just gotta get used to starting the car off from a stop :P
Only things I have to finnish is that there is a slight rear end rattle.. Im pretty sure its a heat shield... My revurse light connector must have fallen off of the revurse switch..
And I cant take my keys out of the ignition because I disconnected that stupid saftey cable from the back of the ignition column.
I have also yet to test the cruise control, and figure out how to disengage cruise when i depress the clutch
IM SO EXCITED AND HAPPY!!!

Im gonna hopefully finnish the write up by next week?
But that might be a streach, I'll be out of town wed and thurs..

[str8 gone]

doing it by your self takes A LOT longer..
Honestly.. If you have the tools and make sure you have ALL the parts out ahead of time, and lay everything out and do everything in steps, and most of all take your time, its not really that hard of a swap.

Way to go Joe....see, it's not THAT hard.This thread helped me out big time, w/out it I would not have had the courage/knowledge to attemptsomething of this magnitude,although the swap sounds alot harder than it really is.You hit the nail on the head when you say that!

[joe325i]

Most Def!
Now! i go out and finnish up the last odd things on it!
WOO BABY!

[joe325i]

So Ive put only 150 miles on it..
And let me tell you!
I dont know why I bought an automatic..
Its soo much more fun, especially in the twisties!

[CRYPTiC]

That's awesome, man.
Now, where's that DIY?

[joe325i]

hahah
Its comming dont worry!
I might skip part numbers for now, thats gonna take a WHILE..
gotta go through all my reciepts.

Only thing i dont like is that the engagement for the clutch is like 1-2 inches off the floor...

[roberttran]

Only thing i dont like is that the engagement for the clutch is like 1-2 inches off the floor...

maybe you need a clutch stop?

[arakele]

Hey Joe,

how much do you have in your swap so far? and what is it with arctic grey and manual swaps....

good work, i'll be looking forward to see some of the details put into your DIY

[joe325i]

I dont think a clutch stop would help, the clutch engagement is that low to the floor, and i bled the clutch right too..

I'll try to be as detailed as I can.. but I did just about the entire swap on my own, I only had help to take off the auto and put up the manual..

Its because artic grey is the hottest color... And its pretty rare, thats one of the big reasons why I swapped me car instead of selling it and buying a 5spd car..
That and these cars are worth nothing anymore..

If you mean how much the swap cost me?
Around 1200.. But you can probably swing spending under 1k, but it might be close

[dustent]

So Ive put only 150 miles on it..
And let me tell you!
I dont know why I bought an automatic..
Its soo much more fun, especially in the twisties!

Good job Joe! I've got about 5k miles on mine and it's working great. Now, can we get back to the OBD2 discussion? Here are my thoughts.

Ok, when you removed the auto tranny you left a couple plugs under the car, if I remember correctly, the main one was round with a handful of pins on it. Lets find out what these wires need to see in order to "trick" the DME into thinking the auto tranny is still there. If this is possible, someone could probably make a plug that connects to the wiring harness and sell it. It really shouldn't be that difficult to do, at least for someone that knows more about this than me. I can't read electrical diagrams, so I'm out.

Seriously, there are only two areas that we would need to focus on, the big plug that connected to the tranny and the gear selector. Let's put our heads together and figure it. More people will be willing to do this swap if they could pass the emission inspection will an obd2 car. Thankfully I live in Wisconsin, where they don't care about emissions.

Dusten.

[niconvertible]

this thread has gotten so long, I remember when this thread got started, crazy!!!!!

[dustent]

bump for obd2 swappers!

[joe325i]

Good job Joe! I've got about 5k miles on mine and it's working great. Now, can we get back to the OBD2 discussion? Here are my thoughts.

Ok, when you removed the auto tranny you left a couple plugs under the car, if I remember correctly, the main one was round with a handful of pins on it. Lets find out what these wires need to see in order to "trick" the DME into thinking the auto tranny is still there. If this is possible, someone could probably make a plug that connects to the wiring harness and sell it. It really shouldn't be that difficult to do, at least for someone that knows more about this than me. I can't read electrical diagrams, so I'm out.

Seriously, there are only two areas that we would need to focus on, the big plug that connected to the tranny and the gear selector. Let's put our heads together and figure it. More people will be willing to do this swap if they could pass the emission inspection will an obd2 car. Thankfully I live in Wisconsin, where they don't care about emissions.

Dusten.

I havnt looked into the stuff for obdII because im a 94!
But mabye... if you short or wire togeather what ever wires go from the auto wiring harnesses to the DME..
Might be easier said than done, I dont know what would happen as I dont have OBDII and have no way of testing..

[joe325i]

DIY started..
I'm upto stage 4 removing the automatic transmission..
See my sig for the link..
Ill be out of town till late thursday night.. SO I'm hoping to have this thing done by the end of the weekend.. Depending on if any of my friends are around...

[millertimebmw03]

I joined BF just to tell all that my 328ic slushbox will soon be a 5(6 mabey?)- speed. Its not if I want to, its when I get all the info to!!!! WHOOO_HOOO it gonna be sweet!
I need that DIY link.
How do I know what type of DIff. I have? I guess that would be a good place to start!
Thanks, Zach.

[joe325i]

Im workin on the DIY!
Ive been soooooooooo busy that I cant see strieght..
You should to get a lower geared diff.. I have a 3.15LSD, my rpms are about 3500 going 80.
A new diff isnt needed, but if you keep your current diff you might as well start in 2nd.

My car was running fine until last week when I went to Hartford for a meeting with Pricewaterhousecoopers, and when i pulled into my parking spot at the hotel, I heard a pop/thud when I put the clutch in before I turned my car off... I heard it again 2 days ago when i was pulling into my driveway.. I had a feeling I know what happened, so last night I took the slave cylender out and put my finger on the clutch fork..

When I ever so gently pushed the clutch fork, it fell off of the pivot pin..
Let me tell you how pissed I am that I have to pull the trans off to fix this.. THis is after I checked that stupid click 5 times to make sure this didnt happen...

IM PISSED! Im just glad that that didnt happen when I was up in Hartford last week, or when I go down the shore next week..
Hopefully i can fix it before I go back to school!

[al_r]

My car, a '96 328i, needed to get its emissions tested (and pass) pronto. In Illinois, if the CEL is on, regardless of reason = no go. Because of OBD II, almost any malfunction will trip the CEL, such as missing the transmission. Pulling the bulb won't work, as this throws a separate OBD II code...
I brought my car in to the local dealer (Patrick BMW) to have them re-program the ECU so it wouldn't look for the auto trans controller and transmission. The problem is that the BMW software can't just download the correct software, so I ended up buying a used ECU for a stick, at which point they had to realign the EWS. From what I was told, when they reprogram, they just input the VIN, my VIN would still be an automatic. This got rid of some of the problem, but I still had a CEL.
Next, they wanted to also reprogram the instrument cluster to change what's called the XCS coding, but would have to read a cluster from a similar running car. I arranged with a local board member (with a '98) to meet me at the dealer. Read his cluster, programmed mine...
All the programming is done thru the diagnostic connector by the secondary air pump.

SUCCESS! with one caveat - after both reprogrammings, the ASC light is on; supposedly ASC can still be turned on/off, but the light stays on. I can live with that, but haven't actually tested the ASC yet...
My car is now just like as if it left the factory as a stick - backup lights work, cruise control works, slightly lower idle (used to be 2/3 between 500 & 1000 rpm (~850), now it's 1/3 (~650)), and NO CEL / codes!
My car spent three days in the shop on and off, and they charged me 6 hours of labor; so now you OBD II owners know what's gotta be done.
I'd guess a fair amount of the time was research and trying to get it to work, but if you need this done, let them know what's involved so they are ahead of the game.

SUMMARY (some of this was redone from my earlier posts):

OBD II cars with a tranny swap can pass emissions tests - mine did!

To get the the car to crank/start and cruise control working, put a brake light switch where the clutch switch is - a brake switch is open when clutch pedal is out, closed when the pedal is depressed. Either a two connector or four connector switch will work; on the four connector, use the two outside pins. Wire the new switch to pin 5 of the auto trans range switch (one of the corners; either Green or Green/Grey) and pin 7 (Brown/Black, hot). This is basically the way the OE system works. The clutch pedal will have to be depressed for the car to crank, released for the CC to work.

The backup light switch was also originally part of the auto shift range switch, closes when in reverse. On my car, pins 2 & 3: Green/White is +12, Blue/Yellow is out to the lights. These two wires now need to get routed to the backup light switch on the side of the new tranny.
Connect about three feet of 18 gauge speaker wire to these two wires. Run the new wires through one of the holes in the tunnel the auto range switch was bolted to. From under the car, snake the new wires to whatever side your backup light switch is mounted on - ZFs are on the right (passenger side), Getrags are on the left?

For both of the above, I used crimp-style blue butt connectors (14-16 gauge) to connect the wire to the pins of the switches. The ID (metal connector portion) is real tight to the pins of the switches, but it works. Also trimmed the plastic of the connector back to the metal sleeve, about 1/8".

The above worked for me on my '96, your mileage may vary.

BTW, the car will be for sale in the next couple weeks.

[roberttran]

Thanks for the info al_r! Let us know if you resolve the ASC issue.

-Robert

[jiggynites]

hehe found a really cheap shop to do the conversion in the bronx

well i just ended up going to a shop to sell a guy a tranny which he is installing on his hatch at the shop. turns out this shop has done tons of auto-manual swaps and the current car that was there a honda accord the guy was doing the conversion for $350 . i asked how much for a 93 3series BMW and was quoted $550 for labor with me including all the parts. if anyone wants the adress just pm me. im def gonna plan on doing this before winter comes.

[heather]

i think that's the same guy who sold me a $50 rolex...please talk to 2-3 people who've had it done with this guy. there are just too many issues from frozen bolts to electrical puzzles that make $350 very suspect .

[Turbo16 PSI]

I have been reading this GREAT writeup about doing the manual swap. The amount of hours it takes to swap over in a BMW is amazing. It took me about 7 hours to swap out my auto to 5 SPD in my 244 Turbo and about $400.00 of course I am a technician with a lift and air tools but wow 20 hours or so on the BMW conversions you guys are commited I will say that...
Keep it up.

[Truman325i]

Yeah juust got done with my swap and its amazing, very fun and peppy. I wish i would have installed a 3.38 diff or something equivalnet, the 3.91 is so crazy geared high and first is usless , but quick as hell.The swao took forever to get all the parts and stuff, its very easy otherwise, except the fuckin pedals ohh those pedals suck.