So I'm an auto guy, but now that I bought everything to do my manual swap, I'm going to be a manual guy! The transmission is obviously out of the car at this point. My question is, should you be able to shift through the transmission gears when the transmission is out? I tried shifting through the gears and it wouldn't shift. any help is appreciated.

 

In my experience you should be able to find at least two or three of the forward gears. Usually because of gear alignment one or two of them won't mesh, but the shifter should move freely and neutral should be obvious. If it's been drained of gear oil that might make some difference. You want to pull the shifter and make sure the pivot and lower bushing are in good order.

 

You should be able to move the shifter freely into every gear, exactly the same as when it is installed in the car.

 

+1. it should also spin freely

 

Thanks for the info. I suspected as much. I just picked this up from another member and it is purported to have around 30,000 on it before pulled for an LS1 swap. It has been sitting for a while. It has a short shifter on it. I don't know if it has fluid in the box or if it has been drained. I just got my first look at it last night. I'll check all that out. I'm suspecting that shift rod ends, the shift selector or the shift fork is out of place. It does spin freely. I'll see what it turns out to be and let you know. Any other help or advice is greatly appreciated.

 

One of the shift rod ends was out of place. No fluid in the box. It was drained prior. Easy fix. Just removed the tail piece, put the rod ends back in place, cleaned the surfaces, resealed, reinstalled the tail piece, and torqued to 39 ft lbs. turns out someone had loosely installed that short shifter. Probably enough to cause the problem. It is staying out until the trans is mounted and then it's getting installed properly. Thanks for everyone's help.
Paul

 

Don't you need a MT rear iron for this swap?

 

No, a manual rear iron is not necessary. The manual trans will bolt up to the auto rear iron. You do need manual transmission to engine bolts and manual starter bolts. It doesn't bolt up exactly but the manual transmission is way lighter than the auto. There's a few threads on here on how to do it.