You know exactly how if feel...absolute frustration. But I remember from the Movie "From Earth to the Moon" when the project manager of Apollo mentioned to a noephyte engineer regarding the lunar capsule validation: "Even if you do 99.9% of the project correctly that still leaves 1,000 parts that can go wrong." A sobering statement about the immense technical task of the moon mission and a reinforcement in the importance of detail.

I screwed up, plain and simple and paid dearly. But I have done all of the work on my seven by myself...the whole car except the body panels. Even though the rebuild will cost me $765 shipped...I am still way ahead if I had to pay someone else to do the work. Not to mention the amount I have learned about my car and using tools.

By next weekend, I will have built a 350rwhp machine...one that I own and dont pay on...looks so beautiful. I am very proud of my FD.

Good Luck!

wow, invaluable information! I am paying for everything I want to do the swap on a wrecked fd so I think I'll grab the harnesses. Thanks for letting me know I need to do that.

Last night while I was preparing for the swap I decided to see if the Manual CPU would mate with the Auto CPU and it did. All the connectors hooked right up and the car started. I thought everything was great until I revved up the motor and it wanted to stall at 2000 RPM. I could get it into drive and reverse and it would run just fine.

Any idea what would cause the motor to want to stall at 2000 RPM? It was lie the ignition was being cut so it didn't appear to be a timing issue.

I don't know if this is peculiar to the JDM or not but the wiring between the Auto and Manual (at least for the connectors) seem to be the same. I do have a Greddy emanage wired into my system but not sure if that really matters.

I'll be in the garage tomorrow starting (and hopefully finishing) the swap. Wish me luck.

OMFG! The last few days have been hell. Tranny in and out 5 etimes. I can do it in under one hour now (the good news) but I can't figure out whats wrong with the install.

I get everything in plae and bolted up but when I push in the clutch, the springs (leaf springs?) on the pressure plate that the throw out bearing pulls on hits the pivot point on the clutch fork and grinds material away. I checked three times and verified that the clutch, pressure plate, clutch fork and snap ring are installed correctly and they were. I thought maybe it was the lightened fly wheel and counter weight (AT) giving me a problem but the deck height was the same as the stock MT flywheel. I even bolted up a stock fly wheel and had the same problem. Tranny is out again and I think maybe the problem is the woodruf key on the flywheel. It appears that the flywheel was too far aft so the throw out bearing would pull the PP springs into the clutch arm pivot and I would feel and hear the grinding when I pushed in the clutch. I also noticed that the clutch fork cup was pretty far forward and the push rod from the slave cylinder would pop out spilling fluid becasue it was at the end of its throw. The back of the throw out bearing would actually hit against the four bolts securing the front flange (??) that the throwout bearing slides on.

My guess is that the woodruf key was installed wrong from the factory because when I took it out it after removing the AT counter balance, it had a lot of damage on it. My question is, could installing the woodruf key cause the flywheel to not seat properly and cause the flywheel to be too far aft? This would explain why the PP was grinding against the clutch fork and why the slave cylinder push rod was at the end of its throw. The clutch fork couldn't pull it back any further. And no, the clutch fork is not bent or damaged.

Any body else ever seen/heard anything like this before? I'll know if my suspicions are right tomorrow or if I will be pulling the tranny again and buying a Celica Supra instead. And this was supposed to be the easy part ....

http://www.jrx7.com/auto5speedswap.htm

John

Im still waiting on the clutch and pressure plate but I do have a lightened flywheel if you want a picture of it. Maybe the insert on the flywheel was machined? Ive heard of that causing problems

Figured out my problem. I had two pressure plates made by the same manufacturer (DK). I was trying to use the new one which was actually designed for a metal 3 puck clutch. I was installing a stock disk. The racing PP is thicker to compensate for the thinner disk. This, added to the extra thickness of the stock clutch, made the fingers (springs on the PP) flex back too far which interfered with the clutch fork pivot and had the back of the clutch fork hitting the back side of the PP.

All is well with the clutch now. Next project is the wiring. I'm not sure if I want to use the auto harness or tackle installing the manual harness. I think I'll try auto harness first and see how far I get. More to come ....

if you need help I have a manual and auto harness sitting in the garage since I'm going with a haltech. I'd be glad to check out where wires go.

Raptor:

Definitely try using the auto harness first.

Its 99% done guys. I used the Auto harness and just hooked it into the new manual tranny computer. I plugged in the speedo switch (no mod required) and jumpered the nuetral safety switch (connected the largest two wires in the plug going to the tranny).

At first the car would start but wouldn't run past 2000 RPM. I took off the emanage fuel control system I had and discovered very shoddy wiring. A wire (to the map sensor?) had disconnected and a few connections were very suspect. I reconnected my stock wires and bam .... fired right up and runs great. The only adjustment now is to increase the idle just a hair.

I say 99% done because I can start the engine with out depressing the clutch (no problem) and I need to hook up the reverse lights. I thought I had it when I connected a plug from the Auto harnes into a connector from the Manual tranny but it didn't do anything as far as i can tell. I'll break out the multimeter this weekend and do some wire tracing. I have a JDM car and US wiring diagrams so I believe there are some differences. Some obvious ones are no air bag, no security system, no cruise control and no Bose radio and of course all the relays and connectors are going the opposite direction.

I can't tell you what a relief it is to get this done. Would I do it again? Yes and no. I would have the conversion done but would pay somone to do it. If I didn't have the clutch problems I outlined above then I would say no problem, a relatively straight forward conversion (but still a lot of work) and I would do it myself. Unfortunately you cant predict these things.

Thanks for all the help guys. I'll let you know if something strange comes up.

Raptor

This should be pinned. I'd let you know how my project is going but Im using a haltech so there isnt a whole lot of wiring detail.

Ok, I removed my harness and my swap is pretty much done. Im waiting on a clutch master from mazda which should be here tomorrow but the haltech is up and running and all seems well. Im not positive I hooked up road speed right since I didnt have a harness to look at and test. The stereo powers on but doesnt have any sound... Various pictures are online for viewing in my gallery on my website http://www.theforumlounge.com/v/COsborne/

also how did you guys modify the inhibitor switch? I still have that portion of the auto harness...

I have no idea how things would work with the Haltech because I just used the stock auto wire harness.

The only wire I had to jumper where the two big wires in the harness going to the Auto Tranny right where they seperated at the tranny. I wired them together by taking a short piece of wire and crimping/soldering on two small flat female connectors to connect to the male posts in the connector. I then used electrical tape to seal it up and make sure it wouldn't come off and zip tied it securely. It took all of 5 minutes including time for the soldering iron to warm up.

Everything works great and I have had no problems. I still need to wire up my reverse lights though.

Good luck.

Raptor

Hey I was in the same boat. Got a clean titled auto for $5k with actually a working engine.

I'm not doing it myself but it is a bit of work although seems straightforward.

You will have to replace the driveshaft and differential too keep that in mind. The auto is a 3.90 and the manual stock is 4.10. The driveshaft is a different size, the manual driveshaft being a little longer.

There is also the issue of the clutch switch for cruise control and starting the car but you could pretty much ignore these depending on your level of anal retentiveness....

Im done with the swap... now I have to make cruise control work again...

My car didn't have cruise control so I can't help you, sorry. I haven't seen a car in Japan with it. There just isn't the room or traffic flow for it I guess. The thing with the drive shaft (propeller shaft in Japan) is the the flange bolt pattern is a little different as well as the input shaft is a different diameter. I didn't notice the length being significantly different though. The rear end ration is also different as stated above.

Good luck with the cruise.

Raptor

thanks, it looks like I just need a clutch switch which is fine since I wanted to wire the starter cut relay through that eventually anyway

OK, I got the reverse lights to work! Just take the brown/black wire out of the grey connector, connect it to one of the reverse wires from the manny, and connect the other wire to a ground. I'm not sure on the color for the JDM though.:cool:

To clarify, by grey connector, i mean x-14 connector.:doh:

Also figureed out the clutch sensor. take one of the pins on the clutch and tap into the wire in 1Q on the ECU harness, run the other pin to ground. Car runs 100% better, and no stalling with a/c on.(this might help: my wire in 1Q was black/orange but i think it is possible to be blue/orange in some FDs.) Also not sure about JDM FDs.

When i did my swap, the cruise still worked.

cruise doesnt work b/c of the haltech... I posted that

SOMEONE ARCHIVE THIS!!!

oops, I messed up. I meant to say the other wire goes to a constant 12v power. sorry about that! :doh:Please forgive me.:bowdown: