240K AUTO TO MANUAL CONVERSION GUIDE

What to do - and what not to do!

Alright so today we had a crack at swapping the manual gearbox from my parts car 240K to my car which is currently auto. I decided to write this for two reasons - firstly to have a record of what we did in case I ever do it again and secondly to give you guys some tips if you do it... Anyway, firstly and definitely most importantly I'd like to thank some people. My good friends Steve and Victor for coming along to help with the whole thing and Victor's dad for lending us a big mother jack, tools and some jack stands. I'd also like to thank Peter (440K on these forums) for coming over on a Saturday to help guide us younglings through the whole thing. He was invaluable for the team. He knew exactly what he was doing and I'm sure without him we would probably be still out there......... So thankyou!!

Also we were very lucky with the weather. It was raining most of Friday and the forecast was for rain through the weekend. We got a bit of rain in the morning but none for the rest of the day. We worked in the garage anyway so it didn't matter, but it gave us plenty of room to clean stuff etc. Let's hope it's the same next weekend because no, we did not get it all done today. Keep reading and you'll find out why! I'm going to write this whole thing in bullet point form with all the major points, or else it'll end up as some huge essay that no one will want to read.

Day 1 - Saturday 21/01/06

- Sprayed WD-40 around a day earlier to soak.

- Drained the gearbox oil.

- All bolts came off reasonably easily, except for the exhaust ones up near the manifold. Turns out we didn't even need to take those off as we could just bend the exhaust out of the way a bit after detaching it from the rear. When we do my car we will try a slightly more delicate method, but for the parts car it worked a treat!

- Undid the whole driveshaft - had to jack the back up and rotate the rear wheel half way to get to the bolts on the underside of the shaft joint.

- Undid all the cradles with the gearbox one just slightly still on so that we could lower it when needed.

- Put a jack under the engine to hold it up while taking the gearbox off.

- Put a jack under the gearbox and nudge the gearbox off a bit until it's free - then slowly lower the jack at the same time as stablising the gearbox. Easier said than done!

- Gearbox was covered in oily greasy mess. It was absolutely BLACK when it came out. This is why you have degreaser, a big brush and a toothbrush!

- Flywheel is to be machined during the week.

- The new clutch was not the same as the old one. We measured and it is slightly thicker as well as larger in diameter - the Repco guy is sorting it out on Monday but I think it will turn out to be a 260Z 2+2 if what Stephen said is anything to go by. We imagine this was not stock and had been replaced at some stage... so I guess if you have the choice, try not to buy your clutch before you know what size your old one is The new one may have fitted... but I'd rather have the beefier clutch anyway. It was then that we decided no more work could be done today.

- IMPORTANT! The pedal boxes are NOT the same. There is a small L bracket that acts as a stopper for the clutch pedal, my car does not have this. Options here were to swap the whole pedal assembly or try to fab something up for the stopper. We tried to get the pedal box out of the old car but it's more trouble than it's really worth. I'm going to attempt to make a bracket during the week...

- I'm also going to restore the pedals themselves during the week.

- The circlip holding the clutch pedal on is a bitch... took a while but eventually Steve got it. I think he used needle nosed pliers?

- Going to also buy a new clutch master cylinder as the old reservoir cap didn't fit on very well... and of course you can't JUST buy the reservoir. Probably a good idea to replace it anyway, it's only $40.

- I'm also going to go to Nissan during the week to try to get a hold of some rubber boots, as the old ones were very worse for wear.

So, that was today. We made excellent progress and I'm sure if you tried you could do all of this in a morning. I was looking forward to trying to get it all done in one day, but alas we couldn't continue. I'm not phased though, at least this gives us enough time to get everything restored, finished and correct. I've waited years to make this car manual, I can wait another week!!

I will continue this thread as progress is made. Peter feel free to add anything if I have forgotten something...

Here are a few pictures I just took. Sorry we do not have any progress pictures, but it was impossible with the amount of dirt and muck that was on our hands.

All you need is one of Alan's S20's Of course, then you'd probably need a different box anyway!

Just wanted to add this information for reference. The GT-R was fitted with FS5C71B transmission with the following ratios:

	FS5C71B
1st	2.906
2nd	1.902
3rd	1.308
4th	1.000
5th	0.864
Rev	3.382

It was fitted with the R192 diff with a ratio of 1:4.444 (This is so high - could be an option part?)

Another point to remember when gearbox swap - make sure you account for all four of the small bush-looking things that go inside the hole of the pedals to space them out a bit so they are sturdy on the fulcrum shaft. These little things are NLA from Nissan and quite fragile! Without them, pedal will be wobbly.

Not over till the fat lady sings, with centre console installed.

Here's the latest - a NOS inner rubber boot from Japan! Could not find one even 2nd hand in Australia so with my good friend Miles' (sakijo) help we organised this! Fits perfectly, looks great and now it's a LOT quieter inside!

Thanks Miles :laugh:

And a metal shift knob to boot !

Thats a nice knob you have there young man!

Yeah it's nice, fits nicely in the palm of your hand. About 2" in size.

It's the exact same shape as the original knobs, but in metal. Now I just have to source a outer gearboot. Will just try to get one made up at a local auto trimmers, otherwise back to Yahoo Japan I go!

hmm, maybe i missed something, but did you talk about the clutch hydraulic line at all? i know that i've had to add that whenever i've converted other datsuns from auto to manual.

Hi Mat, yeah the hydrolic line came out of the parts car too. We replaced the master and slave cylinders though - not sure if I mentioned that. The line was simple enough (easy for me to say, Peter was the one who hooked it up!). I'm not sure if you can get these new or not, but the one we had was fine.

For info, you can source a gearbox with the same ratios as the GT-R from a 260Z and get a bigger clutch from a 260Z 2+2.

btw, first gear is actually 2.905 (yeah I know, picky picky!)

If a C110 is 4 or 5 speed manual it should have a 3.90 R180 as should an early '73 auto. Later autos got the 3.54 R180.

I've just pulled another 3.90 from an auto!