Hey guys
thought some of you might be interested in how the manual conversion is going from my TH 99 tiptronic sports.

Everything bolts up fine, with the exception of the drivers side half shaft being 2mm shorter on the manuals.
The starter motor is the same and bolts up, as long as you get the manual engine plate.
I shorted out the pins on the ECU that go to the inhibitor switch on the AT tranny, this now lets the car start and run.
Interestingly, after firing up, the N light comes on momentarily, then you can hear a relay shutting down the AT ECU and the car continues to run properly.
There is no dead spot at 6000 rpm and the car revs out at full power to redline at 7000rpm, im unsure if this will be different for anyone who doesnt have a greddy.
Power has been increased phenomenally - wish i had of done this a long time ago :)
:badgrin: traction control _works_!!!!!!! well, not for burnouts and spinnign the wheels (the sensor is not hooked up on the diff), but if you corner too fast the trace control still retards the timing and all works properly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i have the only manual magna with trace control heheh
car was running beautifully, last night i was driving and lost second gear.
I thought uh-oh.. so i drive home and get the nose into the driveway just as first gear gives way.
we pulled the box apart tonight and found the pin that holds the shifter arm onto the rod in the gearbox had sheared off and has gone thru the diff, chipping the corners off of two teeth.
We're gonna replace all three pins, wash it out and re-assemble.
Yay! not too long now till i can drive it again :bowrofl:

guru

sounds crazy...once u have driven a manual how could u ever go back to a dodgy p*ss weak auto...
dont forget about an LSD....might wanna get a Quaife automatic torque biasing unit instead of the Cusco unit everyone else gets...

Sounds good mate! Sorry to hear about the breakage tho :( But once it's back Im sure it'll be fine :D

guru, can you give me an indication on the price of a conversion like this? I have the exact same car (99 th sports)
Cheers man and good luck with the trans

well done on such a quick conversion! does your cruise control still work? i still gotta figure out mine too...

also looks like i'll be in for new driveshafts aswell, i gotta pull out my gearbox and re-set the diff (turns out it pretty much on the hardest settings possible, which chewed out my CV's pretty darn quick) very interesting on the ECU running without any dramas!

Yeah :) - woohoo box is back in and theres only about half an hours left of work before she is running again :)
so far conversion has cost me about 2k..
Asylum - nah, cruise doesnt work :( - i read there is an output to the automatic gearbox from the cruise control ECU - just got to work out if i can re-wire this or not.
Also, dont have reverse lights at the moment so i just need to find out where that connects to on the ECU (i have a fair indication but just want to confirm it before wiring it up :p)

so yeah.. w00t !
Guru

You should be able to get the cruise to work :)

Also the reverse lights hook up to a selector switch on the top of the gearbox itself and go nowhere near the ecu. :)

Yeah :) - woohoo box is back in and theres only about half an hours left of work before she is running again :)
so far conversion has cost me about 2k..
Asylum - nah, cruise doesnt work :( - i read there is an output to the automatic gearbox from the cruise control ECU - just got to work out if i can re-wire this or not.
Also, dont have reverse lights at the moment so i just need to find out where that connects to on the ECU (i have a fair indication but just want to confirm it before wiring it up :p)

so yeah.. w00t !
Guru

The reason the cruise is not working is the cruise control module is taking the neutrel reading from the jumper. You can get around this by moving the bridge to the clutch pedal switch, you have your foot on the clutch to start, off to drive and use cruise control. This is only one of many simple ways to thwart the crusie, you will need a switch on the clutch regardless to de activate when you change gears.

Hmm interesting - can you explain how that would work? so the cruise control pedal switch would instead of hooking up to the loom (theres already a connector there for it) id just wire it up so its telling the inhibitor switch connector its in drive?

the way i have it at the moment is so the inhibitor isnt connected at all, and im just bypassing the short circuit the inhibitor puts in for the starter motor - the auto ECU is just shutting down after realising its not in a gear and everything seems to be running ok..

Anyway - just an update - got it all back together tonight, and found a horrible rattle noise when the gears are over-running. so, back to the drawing board, and pull out the box _again_. this time, its gonna wait till next week. :rant:
seems we might have missed some damage to one of the teeth when we inspected it :(
:rant: :rant:

OK its back on the road again
another couple of mysteries disspelled.
after pulling apart the box we found some damage that we missed previously - the pin had cracked another of the teeth on the diff, and the pinion was bruised.
Unfortunately, no one was able to supply a replacement, and new was going to cost $900 :nuts:

I sourced a 3l box, pulled it apart and found very little difference between the two, the gears seemed to be more or less the same size, and no thinner - so im not sure how true the rumours are that the 3l box is weaker than the 3.5?

everything bolts up ok, we used the control assembly and cable brackets from the 3.5l gearbox on the 3l one, because of a difference in the shift cable length on the 3l.

it is now all working well, which brings me back to the reverse lights and cruise :)

yay!

it is now all working well, which brings me back to the reverse lights and cruise :)
Might want to change you're signature now :)

Reverse light:
On the plug (10 pin) for the gear selector/inhibitor switch that's left from the auto, go to pin 8 white wire and pin 7 red with blue stripe wire and tap into these wires and run to the reverse switch on the manual pin 2 red/blu and pin 1 white. If you cut a plug (2 pin) of a manual at the wreckers the wire colurs will be pin 1 red and pin 2 red/blu therefore the white wire on the auto plug will go to the red wire on the manual plug.
1 2 3 4 5 6 are at the top of plug and 7 8 9 10 are on the bottom, all go left to right looking at pins or sockets


One way to fix your cruise:
Cut the blue wire with a red trace at pin 13 on your cruz ECU and the connect it to your clutch s/w this will give you the manual configuration which drops out the cruz when the clutch is pressed, something you really want.

Currently because you've shorted the inhibitor the cruz ecu pin 13 is getting an earth thru the starter windings. On the manual pin 13 gets the earth thru the clutch switch. By cutting the wire at pin 13 this will remove the earth and you can leave your short in the inhibior plug no worries. However as above fit a clutch switch and connect the wire from 13 to it to stop your car over revving.

Hope this helps

i think going from auto to manual reduces abit of power, manual is just better for control but i dont know why u changed from triptronic, thats probly the best so far :P

i think going from auto to manual reduces abit of power, manual is just better for control but i dont know why u changed from triptronic, thats probly the best so far :P

ok? :nuts: out of manual/auto/tippy the manual is by far the best box as far as efficiency goes and its a hell of a lot more fun to drive.

my '99 TH manual would smash your '00 solara because mines a manual

are u from victoria?

Im with BLKMAG on this Manual is by far the better of the two transmissions and its acutally the other way around with power loss manual to auto :nuts: would loose power not auto to manual.

Also auto is never gonna be as fast as Manual for one main reason LSD. Unless u own a rear wheel drive car, then auto with LSD can and most times is faster.

Tom

i think going from auto to manual reduces abit of power, manual is just better for control but i dont know why u changed from triptronic, thats probly the best so far :P

Manual trasmissions in general are more efficinet than the standard auto (including the tippy) meaning more power is making it to the wheels. :P

are u from victoria?

According to his profile he is from Queensland. But I live in Victoria and own a manual magna if you want to go for a run one night.

According to his profile he is from Queensland. But I live in Victoria and own a manual magna if you want to go for a run one night.

Careful Luke, he has a pod filter....

I take my hat off to you Guru. Not a job that I would ever want to do, especially on a FWD car. (probably why I bought a manual in the first place). I remember replacing the drivers side CV boot on my TE, what a pain in the backside that was. After I stuffed around to only find out that one of the replacement boots was the wrong size. How did you resolve the problem of one of the shafts being 2mm shorter ? Were you still able to use the shorter shaft or was it replaced. I am inpressed that you didnt let the first set back dull your enthusiasm, you were straight back into that car and off the gearbox came. Good luck with it all. Just be careful around that ECU, you do not want to damage that bit of kit.

cheers nigel :p im just glad its over with now heheh
the auto shaft was actually 2mm longer - so yeah we had to replace it with a manual one.
Problem was, the replacement manual one i got had the wrong key for where it bolts up to the engine block, so we had to press the shaft off of the bearing / mount and make one good one out of the two :p



Reverse light:
One way to fix your cruise:
Cut the blue wire with a red trace at pin 13 on your cruz ECU and the connect it to your clutch s/w this will give you the manual configuration which drops out the cruz when the clutch is pressed, something you really want.

Currently because you've shorted the inhibitor the cruz ecu pin 13 is getting an earth thru the starter windings. On the manual pin 13 gets the earth thru the clutch switch. By cutting the wire at pin 13 this will remove the earth and you can leave your short in the inhibior plug no worries. However as above fit a clutch switch and connect the wire from 13 to it to stop your car over revving.

Hope this helps

Wow thanks for that info mate i was putting off dragging out all the circuit diagrams as long as possible ;) hehe
Currently, the clutch does have a switch and it is plugged into a socket that was just tied up by the loom - it looks like its connected in parallel to the brake pedal cruise switch?

i assume that when there is an earth on pin 13 it disables the cruise, and if this switch that is already connected to the brake one is doing the same thing (but say to a different pin on the cruise ecu), then theoretically i should just be able to disconnect pin 13, and it should all work (because when you depress the clutch pedal it is the same as depressing the brake)?

cheers. looks like ill be doing some re-wiring on the weekend ;)

electrical nerds :bowrofl:

electrical nerds :bowrofl:

Pfft.. Power ranger nerd!

AWESOME.
Thanks for yer help guys!
i wired up the reverse lights - they all work perfectly & the reverse light on the dash even comes on hehe
i disconnected pin 13, and tried it with the clutch pedal switch plugged into the existing cable that was there by the loom, and it doesnt do anything - the engine over-revs unfortunately so it does mean i will need to run another cable there. Oh well - at least cruise is working for the time being i will just have to be careful till next weekend.
cruise does actually work though. wooooooooooo hoo :)
my car is almost 100% again.
Guru.