Hi Bricksters,

Alas, the old girl gave out on me after 275k miles. Yesterday while I was rolling up to a stoplight and depressing the clutch - it popped. Clutch cable is still intact but it won't go into gear and clucth pedal is soft.

I have an '87 240 that I was parting out and wanted to swap the tranny from it (automatic AW70) to my '86. Anything I should beware of?

TIA

Agree with "Patrick..."....fix the problem. Doubt that the manual is shot,

To do the swap, you'll need to replace the drive shaft from the donor car, cross member, yank the trannies from both, replace flywheel, clutch,etc with the flex plate, torque converter, etc., plus fitting the kick down cable. Don't forget to swap out the radiator from the donor with the automatic....you'll need the built in tranny cooler, to hook up to.

True, its a unbolt - bolt in swap...in the end you'll have a slush box, that requires much more attention, (filters, linkage adjustments, kickdown cable adjustments, etc,) than your manual. If and when you have a dead battery, you'll need a jump instead of being able to roll start it in gear. Plus, you'll not have all the driving fun a manual offers.

Yeah.. I'm a die hard manual tranny nut.

--
84, 242GLTi, 167K, 4+OD, in rehab; 89, 245 DL, 269K, M 47, daily driver; 93, 245, auto, 167K ; and other toys.

I broke many a clutch cable on my old 142e (RIP) and it's pretty easy to check - you can pull the inner cable right out of the housing at the clutch fork. Re. the trans swap - I did a 244turbo the opposite way (AW71 out, M46 in) and everything bolted right in. At least you won't have to install a clutch pedal - but beware the rear crossmember bolts into the subframe rails in a different location on automatic vs. manual transmission cars. 240 cars have predrilled holes to locate this crossmember in about different three positions.

why bother switching out a whole tranny when you could just fix the clutch? Are you sure the cable is intact? Sounds like a broken cable to me(could be broken in the middle where it is hidden by the cable housing), unless maybe the clutch fork popped out.
Either way it will be way easier to fix that then to swap in a auto, with all the kick down cable b.s etc... pretty much everyone prefers the performance/economy of the man tranny over the auto. Remember, "penny proud, pound poor".