I'm wanting to do a conversion, what's the trick to doing one? Is it really hard or easy??? Give me some advice, thanks...

 

Depends on your mechanical abilty and access to tools. Its not very hard, it probably took me 12 hours total of actual work. I also took the engine out to do it wich I think made it easier.

 

Do a search and you will find more than enough information.

 

tried allready but there isn't anything out there for a 5-speed conversion for a third gen camaro. Everything is for a 6-speed and they are different, same concept though. Just thought someone could give me a link to a site on doing the swap.

 

https://www.thirdgen.org/newdesign/faq/thirdgen.shtml

about halfway down.

 

theres a link in the tech articals, and a step by step instruction page on the tech articals at www.fbodymotorsports.com

 

thanks for your help, that answered my questons perfectly.

 

I just did this swap,IMHO,the hardest part was getting the 700R4 out....
Maybe I got lucky...for once
If you have any questions,I might be able to help,contact me
Later
Steve

 

The "trick" to ANY conversion is that if you want your car to be like a factory five speed car, do everything exactly like a factory five speed car. The absolute "trick" is to have a donor car from which you can remove everything that your automatic car doesn't have and copy anything that can't be unbolted and installed in yours. That actually applies to any swap, whether transmission, EFI or whatever.

 

i about to do this swap as well, to my understanding you have to be careful with drilling the hole for the master cylinder so it will line up with the pedal and not put the pushrod in a bind, those of you who have done this swap, do you have any measurements from maybe the bolts on the booster or any other reference points to where the hole needs to be?

 

Two notes:

The end of the upper pushrod sits in a pocket in the piston in the master cylinder. Kind of like the slave piston sits in the clutch fork. It (master cyl.) can be off a few degrees with no ill effect.

The 3rd gen clutch pedal assy. has two rods that hang down and have holes in line with where the 2 mounting holes go in the firewall. You can hang pedals & use those for reference. Also, the gasket on a stock used master works as a template.

 

cool thanks......

 

I too just did this swap about a month ago and pulling the 700R4 was the hardest part for us too. Everything after that was cake.

 

Having a donor car at hand or close by is the best way to go as long as there is no chance for someone else to be grabbing parts from it. JMD hit it right on. A totaly stealth install is the only way to go on either a T-5 ot T-56. I had quite a few different transmissions installed in my bird all of them appeared factory and functiond like they came from the factory with the car. My next and final conversion will be a T-56, if you plan on an engine that will make a fair amount of power I'd suggest you use the best component choice possible.

 

btw, auto cars have the connector up above the drivers side kick panel for the Clutch Pedal Safety switch. You would never know my car was an auto unless you pulled off the rubber boot over the shifter hole and saw the ugly hole I cut.

 

Looking around in any topic on this website that mentions T5's will give lots of information. Two of us did this same swap, very common, three months ago using a parts car and got advice from people here--everything lined up factory smooth the first time. We were a little perturbed about putting the hydraulics into an '82, a non-hydraulic car, but used a template off the parts car and a little encouragement from this website and now it looks absolutely factory original; plus it's a '91 WC T5, a step up in strength over what was available in '82.
The interchangability of this car is amazing--every bolt and little interior screw we needed from the '91 parts car went into the '82. The front end of the torque arm is stamped into a W shape in cross section and the W reversed itself some time in '84, I believe, but our '82 torque arm mated with the '91 torque arm mount on the tranny perfectly. We couldn't find a new torque arm mount, the rubber piece. We decided not to hook up the clutch switch so it'll start in gear like an older car--just a matter of taste--and it took a while to figure out how to get the electronic speedometer sending unit replaced with a mechanical one but the answer was simple: just pull the electronic one out and plug in a mechanical one.
If you like driving stick, don't be afraid of this swap. It changed my car from a Suzie Secretary automatic 305 to a really fun car to drive, especially with the 3.73's that were already in the car.
Those 3.73's will probably be changed to 3.23's some time this winter.

 

Were not the 82 torque arms (behind a TH200) shorter than the 83-92 tq arms? Did it just slide that much further into the bushing?

Don't do it!

 

Well, no--we took the torque arm out of the '91 parts car figuring the '82 wouldn't work because of the W stamping but, trying both the '91 and the '82, the '82 worked best. To get the speedometer cable into the T5 without interference we had to cut about a 3/4" square out of the tip of the torque arm. I'd like to find a new rubber piece for that mount, by the way--the original is OK but a little spongy.

 

I just installed an Energy Suspension Tq Arm bushing on my 88 since the stock rubber one was falling apart. Wasn't too hard to install, just had to grind off the rivets that hold the stock rubber bushing to the mount.

I couldn't find a stock one at Advance Auto.

 

Thanks, Zepher--is that a hard plastic bushing or a rubber one? JMD has me thinking I should get back under there and measure stuff--he said "Don't do it!" Because the rest of the rear end has the hard plastic bushings throughout and the interior is out, getting ready for a roll bar, I get a lot of road noise, hard to tell if any of it shouldn't be there. The car has about 2,000 miles in the last couple of months, probably time for a close inspection of everything under there.

 

The TH200 torque arm and driveline were about 3 inches longer than the 700R4 or T5 pieces.

 

 

The ES mount is Polygraphite/hard plastic.

 

OK, I'll get the Energy Suspension bushing--that'll finish the set of bushings in the rear. I guess because I'm using the original 3-speed automatic (200) torque arm that extra 3" is why I had to chop it a bit for the speedometer cable. Being too short wouldn't be wise, maybe that's why I heard "Don't do it!" But I looked back under there Sunday afternoon and it looks solid and safe.