How To: 5 Speed Swap in Convertibles (and other S13s)

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94_240sx
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thienthan wrote:94_240sx...You're a genious!! That worked. I appreciate the help!
No problem. Glad to hear that it worked.


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the vert
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Ok questions guys im getting ready to buy a sohc tranny the guy says it has 120k miles on it. My question is for one I know it will bolt straight up but are there any differences in the wiring? As in do the sohc and dohc have the same wiring?

Another is I have been looking at clutches and is the clutch for the sohc different than the clutch for the dohc, Am I going to have to buy a sohc clutch and a dohc flywheel?

Would all the be a lot easiler if I get a dohc tranny?

Thanks guys.

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the vert
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bump.....

LS1-240sx382
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Hi, im new to this site, and the 240sx... im not new to cars just this one lol.. i have a 93 240 hatch that i will be doing a ls1 swap in...but curently i am replacing a ka24de in a friends 91 240 coupe and have an issue, his coupe is a manual and the engine that we had shipped to us is out of an auto.. im curious about not being able to install the pilot bearing... i have a friend that did the same thing and just threw the engine in.... is it that needed in this vehicle and setup or no... my training tells me no ... but at same time wonder if i can get away with it? any help would be awesome!! just thought i would ask after reading your post on the swap.... thanks,John p.s. i read your post again and missed the part about removing the auto pilot bearing....im confused with the crank in front of me.. it does not look like it is removeable..?? and if it does then the hole is way too big for the manual pilot bearing..... sorry if i am being a pain.. if you would like to reply to my email insted its [email protected]

LS1-240sx382
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ok i figured it out on my own ... God i feel like a goof... i just did not want to mess it up.... now its about raedy to go in...woo Hoo lol ha ha

1993vert240
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(EDIT: I was able to search and find all of my answers, or just figure them out by trial and error).

Another question:When reinstalling the gusset plate (the metal plate that bolts to the bottom four holes on the tranny) should I have to go out and buy replacement nuts and bolts?Unless I lost the nuts from when I took it off the auto, there aren't any to use...
Modified by 1993vert240 at 9:10 PM 11/9/2009

LS1-240sx382
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ok i figured it out on my own ... God i feel like a goof... i just did not want to mess it up.... now its about raedy to go in...woo Hoo lol ha ha

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the vert
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the vert wrote:Ok questions guys im getting ready to buy a sohc tranny the guy says it has 120k miles on it. My question is for one I know it will bolt straight up but are there any differences in the wiring? As in do the sohc and dohc have the same wiring?

Another is I have been looking at clutches and is the clutch for the sohc different than the clutch for the dohc, Am I going to have to buy a sohc clutch and a dohc flywheel?

Would all the be a lot easiler if I get a dohc tranny?

Thanks guys.
Can someone please answer my question before I buy the wrong transmission? I dont want to make this any harder than it is going to be.

Thanks

1993vert240
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I cannot answer your question on the wiring.As for the clutches, I am almost positive that there is a difference between the DOHC and SOHC clutch.

bspeed_il
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*nevermind* Im retarded! Answered my own question. LOL.
Modified by bspeed_il at 7:00 PM 12/27/2009

thienthan
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The 5 speed swap is the same on an s14 right? Is the wiring the same on the s14?

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Hijacker
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No it isn't. We have S14 swap write ups in the tech article section of the site.

sololock
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you have pics
thienthan wrote:94_240sx...You're a genious!! That worked. I appreciate the help!
you have pics of how you spliced it?

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LingeringSuicide
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You know guys since this is a common thread for us vert ppl it really needs to be stuck at the top

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Hijacker
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It's linked in the FAQ. No need to clutter the page with stickies.

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13esp13
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Hijacker wrote:Ok, so you have your convertible sitting in the driveway, but you feel that the slush box is just plain boring. I've seen a lot of people on the boards looking for how to do S13 auto-> manual swaps. Now it's time for the definitive swap how to...with the convertible flair.

List of things you'll need:-5 speed transmission-5 speed transmission crossmember (can't believe I left that off the original version)-5 speed Drive Shaft-Flywheel-Clutch and pressure plate (if you get a new kit, it typically comes with a new TO bearing and pilot bushing. If you reuse old parts, make sure to get a new TO bearing and pilot bushing.)-Clutch Master Cylinder-Clutch Slave Cylinder-Clutch Pedal-Brake Pedal-Clutch hard line (unless you FEEL like fabricating hydrolic lines)-Shift boot-rubber shift boot and metal circle bracket (used to hold the rubber boot to the trans tunnel)

First, you'll need to pull the old tranny out. Drain the trans fluid from it to lessen the nasty factor a little. While you're waiting for the fluid to drain, go ahead and pull the center console. It's only held on by 6 screws and pulls right off. Next, disconnect the shifter, unbolt it, and disconnect it from the selector lever.

Next, you'll want to pull the transmission. This requires that the driveshaft be removed. Remove the four bolts from the input shaft at the differention, unbolt the carrier bearing, and it should slide right out, leaking more wonderful tranny fluid out. Disconnect the ATF oil cooler lines from the bottom of the radiator at this point, too.

If you're doing a full on engine swap, go ahead and get the motor ready for removal, or otherwise, disconnect the tranny from the motor. This will be a pain since some of the bolts are going to be tucked up by the firewall. Heck, I don't even know if it's possible, since my experience for these swaps are done during engine swaps. After you unbolt the tranny crossmember, it will slide out.

Now, go ahead and remove the torque converter and drive plate. Be prepared for a lot more ATF to leak on you and the floor. Replace the old auto pilot bushing with your new manual pilot bushing. This could necessitate a pilot bushing puller. The new one should slide in fairly easy without much persuasion. Now attach the flywheel and clutch assembly. Pull the shifter out and get it ready to put back on. This WILL be a PITA to do. Even if the engine is out of the car, I have only had annoyance in putting the tranny back on the block.

The fun part is drilling the holes for the Clutch MC, and swapping the brake pedals. I find it easiest to disconnect the brake lines from the MC so you can work the brake booster back a little to get the pedal out.

Worm your way up under your dash and remove the green box up where the clutch pedal should be. That's the shift lock control unit. Just uplug it for now. Now, remove the cotter pin holding the brake pedal to the brake MC fork. Best way is to rotate it till the loop faces down, and take a curved instrument like a pick and pull it out. Now, you can undo the four bolts on the firewall and then the one bolt at the top of the brake pedal bracket. Disconnect the two plugs and worm the pedal out.

Now, take your new shiny (or rusty depending on where you got your pedal) brake pedal and put it up on the four studs of the brake booster. Thread the nuts back on, put the top bolt back in, tighten the nuts down, and then finally tighten the top nut down. Reinstall the fork pin and it's cotter pin. Fun.

For the clutch MC, you'll want to get an angle drill, some good sized drill bits, and a hole saw. The hole saw should be just slightly larger than the clutch MC's protrusion. Get back under the dash. you'll see a bracket that outlines where the clutch pedal will go. Get a drill bit that fits nicely into the hole brackets and drill them out.

Now, take a piece of paper and find the diameter of the embossed circle between the holes you just drilled. Use that piece of paper to find the center point of the circle and mark it on the firewall. With a small drill bit, make a pilot hole. Now, go back outside and use the hole saw on the angle drill to drill out the hole. Once you're done, you can install the clutch MC, pedal, and hardline. Wasn't that easy?

Take the shift lock control unit and plug it back in. If you don't, you'll never get your key out of the ignition. Find a place to tuck it in and ziptie it down so it doesn't bounce all over the footwell.

Now, to make your reverse lights work, your top work, and to get the car to start.

Find the passenger side fuse box. If you look at it, it will have 4 plugs hanging off of it. 3 large plugs, and a small 2 wire plug (it's not visible in the picture except by the two wires connected by the yellow splice).



The park/neutral safety switch plug. I pulled back the relay box to show that it is on the underside. It is not the green plug.

The small 2 wire plug is the park neutral switch. To make the car start, you'll have to jumper those. The easiest way is to canibalize the plug off the AT tranny harness. Then you can just connect the two wires together with a splice and plug it back into the chassis plug.

Next is to make your park and reverse lights work. With pictures!

The middle plug of the three larger plugs is called the inhibitor switch plug.

(Back of the inhibitor plug)

The way the wiring of this plug works is like so: the green/blue wire is a constant voltage wire, and all the other wires run to gear sensors (park, neutral, reverse, 1st, etc).

Wire colors needed for operation:Green/blue to complete the circuitBrown/yellow for parkGreen/white for reverse



If you look at how I've done my wiring, I have directly connected the brown/yellow and green/blue wires. This causes the car to believe it's in Park at all times, allowing the top to function. Then I spliced wiring into the green/blue line (that is what the blue box is for. It allows a wire to tap into another wire without having to cut it or solder it). The new wire was ran to one of the reverse plug wires. Then I ran a wire from the green/white wire. These wires were ran to the reverse sensor. When the shifter is put in reverse, the sensor will complete the circuit and turn the reverse lights on.

Here's a crappy wiring diagram I drew in MS Paint. You can see that the wires for the Green/Blue and Green/White wires are lengthened to reach the reverse switch, and the Brown/Yellow wire is directly connected to the Green/Blue wire.

The reverse sensor is the one closest to the bellhousing conveniently labelled "reverse lamp switch":

Viola. Now fill up the tranny with some gear oil, fill and bleed the clutch line, and if you disconnected the brake lines to work the brake booster around, fill and bleed the brake MC.

If the O/D light blinking starts to drive you nuts, just unplug it. The light blinks because it can't detect the overdrive unit anymore and the blinking is an error code. Disabling the light won't hurt your car at all.

EDIT: I realized that the Shift Lock Control Unit is a vital part to getting your key out. The guide has been edited to include it. Sorry for any confusion
well what is there to do with that inhibitor? with those three cut wires? do you have any more pics? or did you just leave those wires alone after you cut em'?

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Juro240
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Did you read the entire post???? ...

Anyway ..

I Had a 1991 240sx with s14 sr20det.. wiring was all done correctlly..

Now i have the same motor ... in a 1989 240sx..

The dash plug off the ecu was BROWn on the 91 and is WHITE on the 89.. I splice the white dash clip to the sr harness same as i did the brown dash clip ..

The 89 was AUTO ... Swapped it to 5 SPEED..

I Spliced together the 2 wires on the inside for the shiift lock and can get the kkey out without a problem..But the car wont crank...

I know theres one off the fuse box that needs to be bridged toghter also to get it to crank but i dont know which 2 they are.. anybody know the color wires? i beleave theres one clip from lower tranny harness with no home and about 4 or 5 clips on the fuse box that arnt ussed either...

Where is that yellow splice with the 2 wires connected( in the pic)? Do you know the colors of them?i see its black and brown there but i dont have a black and brown... im a little confused ...i have a y/r and y/g clip off trans harness and blk/w and blk/y (both thick) off the fuse box.



Also my wipers dont work.. I hear the amp click... but the wipers dont move but the motor is really hott.. any ideas?

Thanks in advance ...

Modified by Juro240 at 9:43 PM 4/10/2010
Modified by Juro240 at 9:51 PM 4/10/2010

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Juro240
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Ok got it started today.. The wiring from the 91 brown dash to 89 white dash plug is basically the same regarding matching the colors..i had that wired correctly..

my car is a 89 coupe ..

To get car started its the black/yellow and black/white wires from the fuse box that need to be bridged together and the car will start...

as for the wipers.. still working on that one...

jackash002
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so i just got done reading and skimming through all 11 pages getting ready to strip my parts car and do the 5 speed swap..

i know you don't need to get a manual ECU, but the parts car i have as a donor is an 89 (SOHC auto) that had a 92/93 DOHC and 5 speed swapped in, and had a 91 5 speed ECU plugged in..not sure yet what they did with wiring.

So are there any advantages of having the 5 speed ECU since it's free, or is it pointless without the 5 speed harness to go with it?

and a little off topic but closely related.
the 89 SOHC originally auto(donor) had digital gauges/HUD, is there something differnt i would need to do with the speed sensor to use the SOHC digital gauges in my 92(auto) with the 5 speed swap originally from a 92/93?
thanks, Ben

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btm88
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I believe all you have to do to use the digital gauge is switch out the SOHC Tach for the DOHC one, very easy to do by the way.

adamja87
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im doing an sr20det swap in my coupe soon. im going to use the manual ecu that comes with the swap. my car is an automatic as it sits right now. is the wiring the same using a manual ecu and doing a 5 speed as it is using an auto ecu and doing a 5 speed. ive browsed thru all 11 pages and couldnt really find a definite answer to this. help is appreciated. thanks

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biggie
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adamja87 wrote:im doing an sr20det swap in my coupe soon. im going to use the manual ecu that comes with the swap. my car is an automatic as it sits right now. is the wiring the same using a manual ecu and doing a 5 speed as it is using an auto ecu and doing a 5 speed. ive browsed thru all 11 pages and couldnt really find a definite answer to this. help is appreciated. thanks
Yes, 5spd or AT ECU doesn't matter.

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Steve Lloyd
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can we get the pictures re uploaded?? I can't locate my park/neutral/safety switch to get my car started...........

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Hijacker
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Looks like they got eaten by the format change. I'll have them back up this evening

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Jon FLA
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holy s***.. to my understanding the proper driveshaft to use is the NON-abs driveshaft for the swap. Ive seen alot of back and forth answers to that question.. some people's transmission leaks some others don't. Correct me if I'm wrong but the proper driveshaft to be used is the NON-abs ds.

music24
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yes on the driveshaft question ^

Wiring Question to get the ASCD to work: My idea is either to wire in the 4th and 5th gear sensors in parallel and run wires from them at the inhibitor plug to the wires that makes the car think its in Drive OR connect the sensors in parallel to the inhibitor relay so it activates Cruise control only when I am in fourth or fifth gear. Any suggestions or faults with my idea?

Clutch interlock wiring Question: Can i just wire in the clutch interlock switch on the pedal to the wires that need to be jumpered to get the car to start? Any suggestions or flaws with that idea???

Top wiring: from my understanding, the switch doesnt get power untill the car is only in park, so cant I just pull the switch out from the dash and connect it to a power source somewhere under the dash such as radio or ignition???

Thank you much!

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krash
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music24 wrote: Clutch interlock wiring Question: Can i just wire in the clutch interlock switch on the pedal to the wires that need to be jumpered to get the car to start? Any suggestions or flaws with that idea???
Yup! Thats basically what the switch does.
music24 wrote: Top wiring: from my understanding, the switch doesnt get power untill the car is only in park, so cant I just pull the switch out from the dash and connect it to a power source somewhere under the dash such as radio or ignition???

Thank you much!
You might be able to do that, but its easier just to jumper the inhibitor switch.

music24
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Thank you very much!!!

Any input about the Cruise Control wiring?

I pin tested while driving the two wires that run between the ASCD Control Module and the Auto Module, and one wire is a constant 9-10 volts and then the other one is a 12v @ ASCD turned on and set to hold a speed.

My idea is to run a clutch ASCD cancel switch on the clutch pedal and connect it in parallel with the brake ASCD cancel switch. And run the 4th and 5th gear sensors to the inhibitor relay or just jumper the inhibitor relay.

jackash002
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Car: 92 240sx vert,

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so im finishing up a 5 speed swap and the automatic wiring is still in there.. when i was taking out the auto i took the linkage and switch off.. and intact. the only wiring broken was one stupid round plug into the back with 5 or so wires going into it( not the speed sensor)...

so anyways, i was thinking, if that is the switch that tells the car P-R-N-D-2-1 why not mount it on kick panel by ankle and put it in park to start it/drive it, open and close top. and maybe be able to operate cruise if put it in drive, and an anti-theft by putting it in drive or something when you turn it off or after turning it off and then it wouldn't start in drive?.. i just got my car to start with it in park(i think), and ran through the gears while in the park position.. just like jumping the wires in FAQ, but with a switch.. my cruise control doesnt work so i can't test that..

has anyone else done this or tried it? i have the 5 speed wiring from the donor car, figured i would tinker with the wiring before i bypass all of it..

the only exception is that someone spliced into the factory wiring for an alarm or something back in the day, is now gone and would start most of the time without the brake needing to be pressed.. don't know if that is what lets mine do this. and i removed the shifter and unplugged the wiring to it inside the car.. so i guess the OD light is retarded, but that's rather unimportant compared to the possible benefits of the other wiring being used.

so anyone that has messed with that rather than the easy bypass, let's hear about it

-Ben

music24
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I dont think its a mechanical switch that we are used to seeing. The way the switch works is very uncomfortable. You may be better off by connecting the Neutral Position switch from the Manual Transmission to the Park + Neutral wires of the automatic switch, Reverse position switch to reverse wires of the auto switch, and 4th and 5th gear position switch to your Drive +2 + 1 wires of the switch. Or if you like, run the auto switch wires to the kick panel and connect some toggle switches such as switch 1 = Drive+2+1 and switch 2 = Park + Neutral. Leave the reverse wires connected to the reverse position switch on the Manual transmission.


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