The conversion is finally underway.
August - bought an EVO VII 5 speed manual gearbox after having a good look at the EVO and Magna workshop manuals.

Today - bought the clutch control and manual transmission control system off a manual Magna. Playing safe and have the engine loom, ECu and body computer in case.

Rushed home and cleaned everything up.
Then connected the transmission control system to the gearbox sitting in the garage. Everything lined up perfectly.

Now am chasing up the flywheel, clutch cover and disc as well as the hardware that goes between the gearbox and the engine.
Hope to have these by next weekend.

Need a few new bits like a pair of pedal rubbers and new fluids.

First real step on the car is to cut the 3 holes required in the firewall for the clutch master cylinder to be fitted. Hope to do this next weekend and then prefit the manual brake pedal and clutch control system.

BTW - what is a good price for a new clutch kit for a 3.5 6G74 engine??

Pictures to follow soon.

Gerry

You're kidding?!?!

:bowdown:

If you pull this off man, you're opening up a whole new can of worms... especially for AWD owners with an SC...

...you rock!

...pics!

What amazing news. I would have kept my KL AWD if this was more obviously doable. Keep up the good work.

Pics,
Promise. Been too busy cleaning and checking things.

I'll do a set of the bits so far.
Then step by step stuff as the conversion takes place.

BTW. This is my Christmas present!! along with Konis all round and a set of castor bushes for the front!

Now working on her indoors to get the RPW race extractor set up and a short shifter!!
Gerry

you are a champion

I've been waiting a long time for someone to do this. Hope it works.

Should be killer if you pull it off mate. Best of luck!

I think this thread will break the record for number of hits

what's first gear like in the EVO manual, is it going to be too low for the 6G74?

God speed Little doodle

First gear.
Magna 5 speed manual gearbox is 3.789:1
EVI VII gearbox is 2.928:1

All the bits like the reverse light switch, speedo sensor, clutch mounting, main mount, front and rear mounts are the same as the normal 5 speed Magna gearbox.

Clutch release lever and the bearing look idenitcal. The lever rubber gaiter and the round rubber bung in the bottom of the bellhousing from a manual Magna just drop straight in.

As I said earlier, tried the gearchange cables, they just drop in exactly the same position, the connection pins and hardware from a manual Magna appear to swap straight over.
Of course this is on the bench in the garage.

I'll only find out about the transfer box etc around Xmas.

Don't forget that there is ONE reference to a manual AWD in the official Mitsubishi workshop manual. I won't tell you where, you'll have to look for yourselves. Only hint is to look in the TJ AWD section.

Gerry



Gerry

what are you going to do about the diff ratio?

it needs to be the same as stock otherwise your up the **** and will need a big maths brain and $$$ to change the rear ratio and possibly the transfercase ratio, shouldnt have a problem with the transfercase as its evo anyway ;)

but yeah the final drive ratio wouldnt be the same, with such a tall 2st gear i'd say the evo that came out of ran a 4:11 ratio or similar compared to the magnas final drive ratio of 3.3something (from memory, cbf looking it up)

so yeah i dont know if it would even make any difference, if anything maybe it'd change it from 50:50split to 80:20split and burn out the ctr diff from the extra load....

anyone know what would happen there?

Not wanting to sound critical, as I am a big fan of your brave modification.

standard awd 5speed tippy

1st 3.789
transfer 0.3
centre diff 3.684
final drive 3.312

that's 13.87:1 overall reduction in first

A standard manual fwd

1st 3.333
final 3.736

that's 12.45:1 overall reduction in first

The awd needs the lower gearing to overcome the extra mass and geartrain losses. Still, I think first is too low as many awd owners will attest.

BUT an evo manual box with 2.928 first gear will give an overall reduction of 10.7:1 through the magna awd. I can see a problem here. This is around three turns higher than the standard awd magna and nearly two turns higher than a fwd manual.

You will need to either change the transfer case gear ratio or final drive or build a massive torque engine. Otherwise there's going to be a smelly clutch.

Someone please check my numbers.

Gerry,

Your efforts and your call will no doubt get written into the AMC legend.

Please document and photograph the whole process so we can all learn.

I'm thinking Jason (JasonsVRX) can give us some insight into the gearing, as he's driven a Manual AWD.

-Dan

Maybe look at the gearing (bits and peices) from the Galant/Legnum drivelines?

I read the thread title and thought "not another dreamer",

then i thought I'd better open it up to have a look and I must say I'm very impressed

Like has been said, document as much as you can including parts used, photos and a small write up. That would make an awesome Sticky to this forum :thumbsup:

Good stuff!!

Wow this is impressive, hope it works out for you and I'm sure this thread will get alooot of interested viewers. Be sure to document the process with photos for future reference.

:js: :js: :js:

Gerry! Gerry!

:D

AndrewD,
Yes you are dead correct about the Centre diff ratio.
Here is where I need a bit of collective knowledge from everyone.

The Magna Awd tiptronic gearbox has a 3.684 Centre diff with VCD.

The EVO VII manual gearbox has a 4.529 Centre diff.
The question is - Is it possible to swap the differentials over.
From the externals there is an enormous amount of consistency between the Mitsubishi auto and manual transmissions.
It looks as if my big problem is to take the car apart, strip down the auto box and then compare the diffs to see if thay can be swapped over.

Else- does anyone have an AWD tiptronic sitting in their garage that I can have a look at the internals and do a trial changeover with the EVO gearbox.

Everyone,
Thank you for your comments. I really appreciate having some collective wisdom available.

Gerry

I read the thread title and thought "not another dreamer",



i was thinking the exact same thing, you hear people with all these crazy ideas that never go ahead. but this one seems promising. keep up the good work

AndrewD,
Yes you are dead correct about the Centre diff ratio.
Here is where I need a bit of collective knowledge from everyone.

The Magna Awd tiptronic gearbox has a 3.684 Centre diff with VCD.

The EVO VII manual gearbox has a 4.529 Centre diff.
The question is - Is it possible to swap the differentials over.
From the externals there is an enormous amount of consistency between the Mitsubishi auto and manual transmissions.
It looks as if my big problem is to take the car apart, strip down the auto box and then compare the diffs to see if thay can be swapped over.

Else- does anyone have an AWD tiptronic sitting in their garage that I can have a look at the internals and do a trial changeover with the EVO gearbox.

Everyone,
Thank you for your comments. I really appreciate having some collective wisdom available.

Gerry

or you could change the gear in the transfer case - don't know if this is possible?

It has a 0.3:1 reduction through the transfer, this is ludicrous.

goodluck with the conversion mate i really hope you can do it easy enough!


but i reckon it shouldnt be that much of a headache considering all the awd runing gear is already from the evo.... so maybe you have to mix and match parts here and there just finding someone who really does know how the ratios affect things would be good!


then when it's done instant quicker car

the manual fwd's are 1sec quicker over the 1/4 than the auto fwd's so you should atleast get that, plus maybe a lil bit more if you nuts and launch hard now that you can do that! :badgrin:

my car ran a 15.9 totally stock and with 20" rims so a manual awd would be a 14 sec possibility!

thats got to be awesome!

This may be of some help to you. There's a guy in QLD called Neal Lowe. He's an EVO specialist and has been working on rally cars for 25 years, and building race cars for the same amount of time. He's the EVO guru of QLD - he's a really nice fella too so he might help you out.

Neal Lowe Motorsports Pty Ltd
21 Brennan St
Slacks Creek, 4127
Brisbane
Contact: Neal Lowe
tel/fax: (07) 3808 3048
mob: 0419 727 623

Best of luck.

any updates???

Update,
Thanks to recent advice I have to deal with one very minor problem!!

As I have an EVO gearbox the problem is that it has the wrong centre diff ratio for the rest of the car.

I don't really want to find and change the rear diff to match the gearbox as this will mean that there is a substantially lower gearing.

Seems that I have to research Legnum, VR and Debonair manual AWD variants to find the correct centre diff ratio.

Already carefully checked the workshop manual that I found on the net to confirm that it is not possible to swap the current AWD auto diff across, reason is that the drive / driven gear set up is completely different between an auto and a manual gearbox.

As a minimum I need to find the correct manual gearbox output shaft and differential gear combination. This would then mean a gearbox rebuild with the appropriate spacer rings to achieve the correct assembly.

Got to go out now, I'll post some geraing details later to see if anyone here knows where appropriate parts can be found.

Gerry

good to see someone is finally doing it. You need to take some pics tho, even phone pix will do.

Just curious about the use of the Evo VII box. From what I heard the MMAL manual AWD test mule used the box from an Evo V (if memory serves), and was not put into production due to costs and a few other minor issues.

Any more info from this endeavour?

still would love to hear how this went or did it fail?

probably realised it's not worth the head**** and bought a 2nd hand evo instead. God knows it's what i'd do