OK, so I should have my car back from Compact Cars garage tomorrow evening. It has been there since early Saturday morning undergoing the auto>manual swap. It was only supposed to take a day, buuuuuuuut......the garage ended up recieving an S4 flywheel instead of an S5 flywheel. Apparently the difference was great enough to cause a concern about fitment and reliability., so i bit the bullet and waited on an S5 flywheel.

Just imagine it, I am about to go from a piece of **** automatic to a 5 speed with six puck ACT clutch! The difference is going to be extreme.

It was kind of sad seeing the autobox just sitting there bleeding blackened ATF. The automatic transmission was part of the car's character. That slow son of a bitch came in handy on those late night rides home, but the convenience is lost due to its terrible reliability. hard to sit back and relax when you're wondering about a when the next failure is going to happen. No thank you. The rest of my car is way too reliable to have that POS screwing things up.

I'll keep you all posted on the results. I expect that they will be favorable!