Went to the yard today and grabbed the rest of the items needed for the Auto to M46 swap. 1>Drive shaft 1>Flywheel 1> pressure plate and clutch plate. Bagged the crossmember for the driveshaft too, dont ask me why. Looks like the clutch is worn down pretty thin but I took it anyway. Got all the bolts and stuff for the flywheel and nice to see there were no broken or chipped teeth on it. I removed the glovebox to get the OD relay but didnt see it, I was in a hurry to get out of the yard is was pouring down rain and lightning and everything. I sat in 3" of rain water just to get the stuff underneath out and didnt feel like getting sick looking for a relay that might not even be there. I got the trans home yesterday and spent a good hour or two on it with Simple Green, and some hot water and cleaned it all up. After reading all the post and going through my manual and such, I'm thinking that I might be able to pull this off. Guess I'm kinda torn between getting some much needed money out of this and trying to do something I've never been able to. There was one attempt a long long time ago with a Dodge Monaco and 727 trans that went really bad and dont care to make another mistake like that again. But, it would be really nice to say that I did do something with the drivetrain myself.

You guys are braver than I am to take on a manual/auto swap.

Perhaps I'll work up the nerve to try that 5-10 years from now when my wife wears out her 328 BMW (automatic) and passes it off to me. I am at the end of the list, after my wife and daughters, in the car pecking order at our house.

Any thoughts on how hard that one would be?

Pretty much any of them aren't too hard if you have a doner vehicle with all the parts you need. Just take all the stuff out of the doner and transplant it into yours. I've only did this one Volvo but I have done several domestic "muscle cars". The hardest thing about the Volvo was getting the pedal assembly bolted back in. Gotta turn into a pretzel under the dash, can't see the top two bolts, no clearance, etc.

Bimmer shouldn't be any different than any others, I've changed clutches in a couple but no swapping... About the only monkey wrench I could think of would be if a manufacturer were to put different cranks in and you didn't have a hole to put the pilot bearing in!

Justin

I don't think you should have any problems, especially if you got everything from the doner you already know how it goes back in. If you clean up all your booty before hand then I would imagine it would be a fairly easy weekend job.

One more thing you might want to get off the doner, I forgot and ran all over town trying to find something that would work. There is a large internal snap ring (or some kind of retaining ring) that helps secure the pilot bearing, get that retainer! I wound up with a big snap ring, I don't think that was what was supposed to be there but it was the closest thing I could come up with.

The sequence I did mine in was:

1. Swap around pedal assemblies, this took me a morning. I did this first in case there was the slight chance I might need to move it and it would still be driveable with the new pedals in place.

2. Yank auto, that took me the afternoon. The longest operation was getting an old steel ring out of the end of the crank where the pilot bearing has to go. I had to go to Harbor Freight and buy a bigger slide-hammer but it finally came out.

3. Install all of your manual stuff, took me most of a day. I used blue Lock-Tite on the flywheel and pressure plate bolts. At this point you can at least drive it.

4. Swap out OD relay for the manual relay, run wire for 4th gear switch and backup light switch. Re-wire the OD circuitry, wiring is slightly different between auto and manual models. This took an afternoon but can be put off until you have time if you're not on the freeway all the time.

Keep us updated!

Justin