Ok guys give me some help here. I plan on restoring my 87 rx 7, but it is an automatic, just wondering how hard it will be to switch it to a manual, I have a lot of bodywork to do before I pull this off. If anyone can help and give me some advice, I would really appreciate it.

 

Not very hard depending on how much effort you want to put in. I replaced a tranny (manual for a manual) right after I got my car. All in all I'd say it was a 10 hour job. This is with very very little mechanical knowledge. Add about 2 hours onto that for automatic swap (for me at least).

 

what about mounting the clutch pedal, running lines, swapping out the rear diff?

 

 

manual into a manual is a one or two hour job (or more); depending on annoying factors of how nice things are being that day. i wouldnt compare replacing a manual tranny to swapping auto, though.

i believe theres a write-up at www.rotaryresurrection.com for auto >> manual.

 

One of my friends who likes working on cars did that swap. He said he would never do it again because it was so much trouble.

BTW, the differential has the same flange as any other NA FC, so you can keep it as long as you don't mind the gear ratio. However, you will need a MT NA driveshaft because the AT NA driveshaft is too short to proplerly mate with the shorter MT transmission, and the AT driveshaft will not mate to the MT transmission.