My apologies if this seems like a stupid question, but I was wondering how difficult it would be to stick a manual tranny in an automatic chassis? There seem to be a decent number of 'perfect' Iroc's (fitting all of my criteria) out there for sale, but they're almost all autos. If it's only a day or two project, I may as well just settle for an auto, then swap it out after a while if the rest of the car is nice. Cheers!

 

Regarding the chassis on the third gen,

The firewall *probably* has the hole for the master cylinder already. The pedal braces (rods on third gens; stamped on fourth gens) need to be used.

The floor on third gens has a mounting ring (with screw holes) spot welded to the floor underneath. fourth gens lost this but have a creased edge around the opening. And the floor is shaped slightly differently there.

Crossmember mounting on really early third gens doesn't have all the fastener locations for the 700-R4 / T5 crossmember.

Everything else is cool. But you still need to address wiring, pedals, ECM, and a bevy of other things.

 

Which manual trans would you want to go with?

 

I haven't completely decided yet since the project is still a little ways down the road. I'm basically planning to buy an LS1 camaro from someone, drive it a bit while I upgrade the suspension, interior, wheels, etc to taste; then drop an LS3 with some slight mods in there so it pushes a little over 500HP. Perhaps a beefed up T56? People seem to like those. I'm mostly trying to figure out if it's a ridiculous idea to drop a manual in the place of an auto, or if I would be better off waiting for a manual setup to begin with.

 

I am in the procces of finding parts to do a lt1 t56 swap. It can be done and the lsx motor and trans can be pit into are cars with out that much difficulty. The t56 is one of the most sawed after swaps . I'll post a few links when I get back to the house .


Edit - start reading the stickies at the top of the page and then read every thing yoi can about the lsx swaps with t56's there are a ton of threads on this topic , take notes just one step at a time .

 

Im not sure where you got that info. Auto third gens do not have a hole cut for the Clutch MC. You will need to cut that hole as well as the shifter hole. Wiring is not all that difficult.

Where are you located? If your close by id offer my services to do the swap seeing as how i already did it.

 

Thanks man, but I'm out in Kansas, so I'm a little ways off. The project is still in the design process too. About how long and tricky was it? Just a weekend job or so?

 

Depends on how good you are with a wrench really. Im pretty decent with a wrench but cant really get more than a few hours in at a time before i end up getting pulled off to other responsibilities. Im also a bit of a perfectionist so i took my time with it. The hardest part of it all was doing the pedal swap and cutting the hole for the MC. There is not a lot of room to work down there and im 6'3" so it was "interesting".

I think if you had some help and planned out everything very well and had everything you needed you could get it done in a long weekend.

 

Sounds good. I'm pretty good with a wrench and have been doing mechanical stuff since I was single-digits, so I figure I'm about as good as the next guy. It sounds like it won't be as bad as I had feared then.

 

T56 swap into a third gen is actually pretty easy. It bolts right in, and the metal is so thin the holes are very easy to cut with a dremel.