Sorry, It has been a while since I've posted. I found a job. This is good, as now I'll have money to pay for my projects. It is bad, as I'll have much less time to work on my projects. But I enjoyed my couple of months of unemployment... now back to work.

All I am going to do right now is post my diagram of the speedo gear. I'm having a plug made and provided the maker with the diagram so they could make a decen plug. It might be useful if anyone else is doing the same. It will be a full-res picture, if anyone wants to upload it for detail.





Along other lines, I've sorted out all the electrical. In my original plan, I was going to replace the pedals, and put everything together, and later come back and put in the tranny. But carefully comparing the wiring diagrams for a 1991 auto and 1985 manual revealed that the wiring harness are different. It is interesting--there are only a few minor differences, but they are sufficient that it will not be the simple matter of exchanging relays as I had hoped. So, I want to replace the harness while I have the dash off. So my 3 step plan is reduced to a 2 step plan. Step 1: Put in pedals, tranny and wiring. Step 2: change rear end.

I drained and put in new oil. 2.5 quarts of ATF type F. In retrospect, I kind of wish I had gone with the 10w30. Both are specified in the greenbooks, but 10w30 is recomended for taxies or high milage vehicles. Oh well. Maybe next time.

I need to repair some of the wiring harness. Nothing is non-functional, but some is pretty ragged, especially the reverse gear harness, so I'm going to get some bullet connectors and splice and solder some new wire into the harness.

I'll try to post some more pictures.

 

Looks like this:

 

hah, that looks like the plug my friend made for my bmw r1100rs, a replacement final drive from a newer model had a sensor sticking out, we replaced it with a brass plug my friend turned on his lathe, o ring slot and all.

 

Looks very good. Can't wait to get in on the tranny.

 

Picture bump.

Also, I've been absorbing information on setting up rear ends. A lot of my info is based on Jeep stuff, but it's pretty much the same. This is the best article I've found yet:

http://www.4wdmechanix.com/How-to-Da...e-Rebuild.html

Other sources (like turbobricks) have also led me to believe that the Volvo axle uses shims for adjusting pinion position, as opposed to a one time use crush sleeve. The best way to find out is pull the carrier on the spare axle. Another thing that I forgot to consider is the ring gear should just swap off the old carrier and onto the new and thus solve the tone ring problem. The pinion itself will have to swap completely since it is one piece.

 

I've been busy lately... lots of work. And lots of driving. As I am driving 250 miles a day sometimes, I'm putting some emphasis on getting everything squared away on the car... I really don't want to get stranded, so I'm trying to get everything taken car of that I may have been put off. But, I've had a little time to work on the tranny.

Here are some pictures of the plug in place:


The fit was absolutely perfect. I slipped the o-ring on, and then put the plug in place. It was a little tight fit, but not difficult. Exactly what I was looking for. Here's another few shots:




I also spent a few hours working to de-grease my engine. I should back up a moment. I'm about 2,500 miles in from my last oil change (I've been doing it at 5.000 miles), and I noticed that I needed to add a quart of oil. That's not uncommon, i know for a car with 177,000 miles, but I've never put any oil in it at all before, so this is a new development. There is also some fluid showing up in my splash pan (I've probably only had that on for 4,000 miles or so). When I got the car some couple odd years ago, the engine was coated with oil and grime. I've meant to clean it off, primarily because it is far easier to spot leaks, but never got around to it. Well, now I have the excuse, and I worked on it. It's not going to win any car contests for beauty, but it should allow me to figure out where (or if) i have a leak.

I've also found a place to re-surface my flywheel. They'll do it pretty much on the same day. So, the plan is to make tranny switch thanksgiving week, when hopefully I'll not need to drive for a week or so. Admittedly, I think it could get done in a day, but I'm building in some spare time incase things don't quite work as I hoped.

 

I'm satisfied, for now.

 

A few updates:

Next week I plan to do the change. Probably starting either tuesday or wednesday.

Today, I spent a while cleaning up the support bracket. I got the one that was on the tranny... however, looking at it, I think it is the same one that was on the bottom of my car already--just with a different adapter bolted on. Oh well. This one was out, so I cleaned it up and painted it. I'd post a picture... but it is pretty boring--its just black like usual.

I spent a few hours a couple of weeks ago shoring up the harness and all the wiring. Some of it was in pretty lousy shape--especially the backup light sensor wiring. The bullet connectors were pulled at a pretty sharp angle, so the insulation had come off, and the wires were bare. So, I cut the wires, spliced new wires in, and soldered on new ends. Then, I shrunk-wrapped it all and used some electrical tape to add that protection that I largely had to cut off to make the mends.

The tyranny also leaked a bit out of both the filling port and the drain plug. So, I rotated it on the engine stand so the oil would not drain out while I removed the plugs. Then I applied some teflon tape, and put 'em back in. Things look copacetic so far.

I've also been reading a good bit about removing the auto tranny. Doesn't look too bad. I'll post up some screenshots of what the greenbooks have to say at some point.

 

Okay, folks. Hit a bump in the proverbial road.

Drove to church yesterday. Temp: about 30 degrees and windy. Came out three hours later. Temperature about the same. Went to start car--turned key to start position (III) and hear a click, and that's all.

I get a ride home, and come back later with some limited tools and a trailer (in case I can't get it to go). Also read this thread:

https://volvoforums.com/forum/volvo-...roblems-58902/

Possibly an issue.

Pretty well ruled out Park and Neutral switch. Messed with that for probably 15 min or so. No change. Furthermore, the solenoid would click, which I don't think it would if the P/N switch were the problem.

Tried jumping the car. No dice. Same click.

Used a jumper to go directly from the battery to the solenoid. Only got the same click.

Conclusions: Starter solenoid is bad or there is corrosion in battery wiring harness to starter. From what i've read online the last day or so, those are the symptoms.

So, the car is in the garage, and it is warming up in there, and I'm going to go see if I can rule out corrosion (or figure out if that is the problem). But I thought I'd post in case anyone had some useful comments in the mean time. It seems strange to me that the starter went so quickly, it this is the case. I would have thought it would be an intermittent problem before just nothing working.

Anyway, I'll go look at this a bit better and get some pictures in the next few hours.

 

Alrighty... Well, the bad starter motor was the catalyst to get this job done. So, I ended up doing three jobs at one time. They were:

1) Replace Starter Motor
2) Replace AC/Heat Blower Motor
3) Replace my automatic Transmission with an M46 Manual Transmission.

I took a bunch of pictures, used a lot of websites as reference. I'm going to try to post most of that here.

First to the stater.
I tested it by applying voltage directly from the battery to the starter solenoid. It only clicked, and did not start. So, I figured it was time to remove it.

I got my replacement from FCP euro. There's was the best price, and it was a new one, whereas the ones for nearly twice as much at my local stores were rebuilt.
Here is the old and new side by side:

Removing the starter I found to be tricky.
Best advice I found was on the last post in this thread:
240 starter motor - Volvo Forum : Volvo Forums
I undid the transmission mount, lowered it a few inches, and I could get in there with all the extensions I had for 1/2 inch drive, a wobble, and my beaker-bar.

This is the starter out:


Once out, I bench tested it. The first time, I just got the same click. The second time, I got the click, then the motor spun, but very slowly. I tried again, and then it spun up and worked the way it should. And maybe it would have worked forever after that... but I wanted to have it be reliable, so I ordered a new one.

On to the Blower
So, next, I decided to get started on replacing the fan motor Blower.

My reference to this was Art Benstein's cleanflametrap.com. It's hard to do much better than he did. The only comment I would make is that in a few places he says that a t-25 will do, and while it might work okay, a few of those screws are t-27s. If you have to really twist it hard, it is better to have the correctly fitting driver. (I know this from experience,fortunately in non-critical locations.)
I looked at the dash removal page:
1990 Volvo 240 Dash Removal
and the blower motor page with dash out:
1990 Volvo 240 Heater Fan Blower Motor Replacement
I decided to remove the dash entirely because I felt it would make it easier when trying to add another pedal to the car.

My dash is in bad shape:

Unfortunately, I don't have one to replace it with.

I didn't order a new resistor pack. I was gambling that mine would be in good shape, since the motor hadn't failed, and was just noisy. I ended up being right about this. Since I did not have to re-wire the resistor pack, this greatly simplified the rewiring job that Art shows on his page.
Here is the new motor (left) and the old motor (right):


Now to the complications. I also got this motor from FCP. It is the VDO/OEM replacement... and it didn't work very well. First, the fit on the turbines was quite tight. I thought perhaps I got them on backwards. Nope, I did it right. Second, the D-indention and the cuts for the retainer clip don't line up with the retainer intentions in the turbine. This was a lot of cause for consternation on my part, as I could NOT figure out what was going wrong. Why would the clips not fit in properly? I ended up deciding to leave them in place without being in the retainer indention. (See picture Below) I may live to regret this choice, but it seems to me like there isn't a whole lot of chance of them moving around a lot.

After all of this... the motor isn't quite centered. So the drivers side turbine scraped, and the passenger side turbine had lots of room (Maybe a bit to much). I could remove the motor and try to make stand-offs to more precisely center the motor, or I could sand off the drivers side turbine a bit. I did the latter, as I had already wired it up, and didn't want to to through the trouble of trying to unwire it. Anyway.... FCP will be hearing from me at some point. And it's not really their fault--VDO dropped the ball on this, but they need some feedback about how crummy their replacement fan is.


Adding a Clutch Pedal

From there, I moved onto the detail work of replacing the clutch pedal for the new transmission. I think one could reasonable do this without removing the dash--I know people have, but I preferred taking off the dash. It is also makes more sense of what you have to do with the cruise control. On this year, the cruise control is all under the dash there, next to the pedal. (Reference photo below has arrows to the diaphragm, vacuum hose, and the switch on the brake pedal).

Unbolting the pedal-carrier is easy enough--four nuts on the firewall, and two bolts at the top. Getting the pedal carrier out is another matter. I got it... but it took a while, and it is a maize of wires under there. In retorspect, I should have removed the carrier assembly for the cruise control first. That would have made it much easier. I just didn't realize it was a separate piece from the pedal carrier.
Below is a picture of the old pedal carrier (on the right) with the cruse control bracket still on it. left is the new pedal carrier.

Anyway... I have to brake for a while... so I'll return later and finish this post.

 

How Best to Clutch

At this point, I had some decisions to make. If you look at the new assembly with the clutch (it came out of an '85 wagon), you'll notice some strange features. A detail you can't quite make out in my last picture, I've blown up below:

That's right: it has a spring that pushes down on the pedal, the same direction as your foot. What is this all about? I had to figure that out.

Related to this is the absence of a clutch fork return spring. Is it supposed to be there or not? I find it in parts catalogs, and I found the hole for it on the transmission support beam... does it need to be there or not? Here is the parts catalog for '85-'88:

Notice the spring.


Now move to '89-93:

No clutch spring. One reason, is they quit putting the M46 in 240s by this point--they had moved on to M47s. But both have that ridiculous clutch spring on the pedal going the wrong direction. Another explanation seems to be in order...

The most common response I found was that you didn't really need the clutch return spring--the clutch provides enough force to return it. Okay... but what about that silly spring on the foot? Do I need assistance to push the clutch?

The answer that most satisfied me was as follows:

"Your mechanic is correct but you can and probably should fit a return spring. Volvo, in their infinite wisdom, changed the design in the early 80s and put a big block of metal on the end of the cable to pull the cable tight and put a spring on the clutch pedal pushing the pedal down. Swedish engineering is usually sound but this arrangement is crazy! It results in constant pressure on the throw-out bearing and the fingers on the clutch diaphragm - leading to premature wear and clutch drag not to mention stressing the selectors and synchro hubs when the clutch drags.
It is much better to go back to the 1970s arrangement. First detach the spring from the clutch pedal by slipping one end over the pedal with a large screwdriver. Replace the big metal clutch block with a small cup washer and the small rubber block that you can get very cheaply from Volvo (they no longer sell the big block). Slide the spring through the slot in the middle of the fork. Hook this end of the spring around the clutch fork above the rubber block. Pull the other end back to the cross-member that holds the rear gearbox mount. If you look carefully, you'll see a hole in this that you put the other end of the spring. It is a long stretch but once it's in, it will be clear how it's supposed to work. Goodbye clutch drag and chirping noises from an overheated throw-out bearing. Welcome clutch longevity!"

This from: Clutch Return Spring - Volvo Forum : Volvo Forums

I kind of wonder if it really does make any difference. The 740 I learned to drive on had an M46 transmission in it, and 300,000 miles later, it still has it's original clutch, and no return spring. But... a 740 Turbo has a hydraulic clutch, and maybe that makes a difference.

At any rate, I decided to remove the spring, and order a clutch fork return spring. In the mean time, I'm driving without one.



Once that was decided, I made sure cruise control bracket would mount properly. To do that, I had to remove a stud from the old bracket, and put it in the new one. Let me see if I have a picture of that...

Okay, here is something that will work. The arrow points at the stud.

Anyway, that stud has to be removed. I used some vicegrips and managed not to screw up any of the threads. Mind, the stud will only screw one direction, because there is an unthreaded area in the middle of the stud (a stopping point of sorts) so if it's really hard, try the other direction, and it should come out.

Anyway, i test fitted it on, and everything worked okay. Then I took it off again, so I could more easily install the pedals.

A Hole in the Firewall
I was going to install the pedal carriers, and then cut the hole in the firewall. However, I thought it might be easier to do without the pedals in there. So where do I put it? There is no clear divot. With some research, that part of the firewall is a separate piece which is changed depending on if you have an automatic or a manual. So then, where to put it? Mine looked like this:


It's really rather tight under the hood there, and I didn't want to risk hitting the brake assist cylinder... so, back to the web. I'm certainly not the first to ask this question. This was the answer I found most useful:
Where do I drill for the clutch cable? - Turbobricks Forums
That area where the metal goes up a bit--kind of in the center of that seems to be the best place. So, that is what I did.

I started with a hammer and a punch:


Then got a drill and some cutting oil:


I find when I want to place a hole precisely, I first use a small punch to indent the metal, then use a small bit to make a pilot hole, then move to a larger bit to make the actual hole.

Pilot hole:


Finished hole:


Then, I painted it to prevent rust. And here is it with the cable test-fitted through it:


Then and only then, I put in the pedals. Putting in the pedals was tricky. It took me probably 10-15 minutes of working it up in there, and I don't really know that I have any words of advice on it. But with a little patience, I put them in.

This is the end result that everyone wants to see:


But this picture is a bit more useful.

You cannot see the studs that go through to the brake cylinder, but you can see the two bolts that go in the top of the brake carrier, and the single bolt that holds the clutch pedal carrier in place.

I did not install the clutch cable at this time. I thought it most prudent to wait until the transmission was in place, so I could figure out how I needed to route the cable--it was not as instantly clear as I thought it would be.

Wiring up the Transmission

This link: Volvo AW71 to M46 Transmission Conversion Seems to indicate that the wiring harness for the AW71 and the M46 are the same. Maybe. But on my car, it didn't look like it was going to be that clean. So, having the dash out, and having the old wiring harness, I made the switch. It was relatively painless.

Dash with old harness:


Arrows point out the key features. The white box in the center is the relay for the old tranny. the connection at the far left gives the relay it's power and also lights up the indicator light. (light doesn't work with m46 without some alteration.) The arrow on the right shows the connection to the tranny. This differs most with the M46 harness, as the M46 harness has a 4th separate connection that goes between the shifter **** and the relay.

Here is the M46 harness in place:


And a detail of the new plug, omitted in the above photo:


Green arrows point to the harness from the AW-70, Red arrows to the M46 harness and relay, just installed.

A few other housekeeping items while were doing electrical work:

The connector in my hand is the connector that checks to see if you are in P or N before allowing you to start. The connector just behind my hand is also important--it goes to the back up light switch.

You can't tell by the photo... but these are both on the drivers side, in roughly the opposite position where the earlier mentioned plugs were on the passenger side.


Here is the bypass for the manual. You could use any old piece of wire to do this, but I had the real thing, so why not use it? The other blue plug shown is still the backup lights. I just hadn't unplugged it yet in this picture.

That about wraps up the electrical, at least until the M46 is in the car.

I'll stop for now, before I become incoherent. Up next, physically removing the AW-70 from the car.

 

Removing the Automatic

Getting to all the bolts to remove the tranny out can be a little difficult. Here is the diagram from the greenbooks:


The top two bolts are just difficult to get to. So, again, out I went on the internet to find out what people said.
The last response on this thread seemed to be the most useful:
Volvo 240 clutch job - Turbobricks Forums
So, I just had to track down an 18mm box end wrench (I had size 8-19, except 18...) and when I did, it wasn't too hard. I had to get a bit creative, though. I wasn't strong enough to get the bolt started... so I returned to my classic tools:

I get that wooden rod at as close to a right angle to the wrench, and hit it with the mallet there, and that broke it loose nicely. Thereafter, it is just slow, turning about a 6th of a turn at a time, and there is barely enough room to do that, but out it came.

As a note, I had gotten all the other bolts out by the time I started on these last two, so I was by now already supporting the transmission and engine with separate jacks.

Motor Jack:

Sorry about the Batman angle on that one...

Here you can see both jacks:



In that last picture, you can see the bolts that you need to remove to free the flex plate from the torque converter. EDIT: Actually, looking at that picture again, I've already removed the bolts, and am starting to lower the tranny. END EDIT. There are four, and you turn the engine to do this. Also, but this point, I had disconnected the drive shaft. The greenbooks recommend putting the transmission in 2nd gear when removing. I don't know why, but that is what I did.

Few other things... remove the dip stick... you'll get a lot of oil out of it even if you've already drained the transmission. You also have to remove the shifter linkage. disconnect electrical connections, and then you'll have to remove the oil coolant lines. Good luck with that. We tried, but ended up mangling them. The radiator side was no trouble, but the transmission side would not free up, and ended up breaking the lines. Oh well. They're about $50 a piece, so I was trying to get them out intact. In case someone had interest in the transmission, I could give them the lines as well.

Anyway, then we pulled the jack backwards a bit, and let it down slowly. The exhaust lines get in the way a bit, but it comes.


And here it is out of the car.



Prep work for the M46

First order of business: remove that flex plate. That is pretty easy: 8 bolts to the crankshaft. BUT before I did that, I realized that it was going to be important to align the crankshaft the same way the flex plate was aligned.

Here's a look at the flexplate:

And again at the flywheel:


As you can see, the gap is pretty much the same. There is only one large gap. Reading around online, some said that there are a few options, and not all flexplates/flywheels for LH 2.4 are identical. Or maybe it is just when you switch to regina that things change... but I verified that they were the same.

What I was getting at was that it is important to know where to orient that gap in relation to the crankshaft. and the thing is that when you remove the flexplate, you'll probably turn the motor in the process (I did). my solution was to remove the bolt closest to the gap, and use a sharpie to mark the threads that the bolt came out of--obviously marking the flexplate would not be of much help. So, with that, out came the flexplate.



In the photo above, I've removed the flexplate. However, there is a spacer still on the crankshaft end that I didn't immediately realize was there, and is still in the picture.

The following picture I re-sized a bit larger so you can see the detail a bit more.


The flex plate is on the left, setting with the engine side towards us. Setting on it is the spacer. Above it, there is a little flange that goes in the center of the flex plate. I can't really figure out why it is there... it's not like a rod goes through the torque converter and need to be supported in the center of the crankshaft... but whatever. Anyway, above that even more, close to the flywheel, there is another spacer sort of thing that went on the bolts that held on the flywheel.

As you look over at the flywheel (also setting engine side towards us) you notice an indent. That indent fits nicely onto the crankshaft.


Engine again, without the spacer on. Note the mark on it, showing the bolt closest to the gap in the flywheel/flexplate.



Getting the flywheel on was not super easy. Had to get a screwdriver in the starter teeth to keep the motor still while tightening the bolts to torque. Come to think of it... that's what we had to do to get the flex-plate off. Kind of annoying. Anyway, as you can see, we transferred the index mark to the flywheel... and did turn the motor a bit in the process.


Putting the clutch in place was not difficult. It came with a clutch alignment tool. Very useful, but makes lining up the clutch very easy. You can't see it from my picture, but I also put in the thrust bearing. Then putting on the clutch was easy, tightening it up a little at a time all evenly and crosswise across the clutch. (I read that somewhere... I think it was in the greenbooks.)


With that, the new clutch is in place.


Getting the Transmission Ready

The M46 Transmission needed a little final work done to it before I could get it in the car. First, I needed to remove the shifter ****. I had left that on, because I could use it to work through the gears when I took the cover off, but now, it would probably only get in the way while trying to get the transmission up. (as a note, I don't know that I would have been able to get the transmission up there had I not taken it off.) Removing the shifter was pretty easy--remove the retainer bolt on the bottom of the shifter. I didn't get any pictures of this... but I'll put up the parts diagram for reference.

number 38 in the diagram is what you remove. this loosens #9. You can slide out that pin. be careful not to lose the bushings. Or... I guess you can... it will probably even work without it... but I didn't want to loose them... Finally, you remove the circlip on the top that holds the shiftier into the ball joint. I don't have a picture for this. But then you give it a good yank, and out it comes.

The other thing I had to do--and I could not do it on the engine mount I was working with the transmission on earlier--was install the new clutch fork and throw-out bearing. And then I put the boot back on it. Here are the pictures.



The old throw out bearing was in good shape. It looked like crap, but the bearning ran smooth. But having a new one, I put that in.

Anyway, that will do for this evening. I'll probably get the rest in my next posting.

 

Putting in the M46

Putting the transmission up in place was incredibly difficult. Maybe we were doing something wrong, but we had the darnedest time. We spent at least a good 4 hours trying to get it up there. It seemed like everyone on the boards was just like, "Oh, I just bench press it up in there, and it's done." Maybe they're all liars, and didn't want to admit it was really difficult. Or maybe they know something I don't. But, I'll explain the challenges I experienced.

1. The exhaust system is in the way. At almost every turn, it makes it difficult to get it into where you want. Going striaght up was not really possible because it was in the way.
2. The transmission has to be back a bit, so that the spline clears the pressure plate. this leads to the next issues.
3. The transmission tunnel isn't that roomy, and the bump for the starter motor kept running into the tunnelt. This, because the transmission had to be back a bit.
4. And also, the shifter linkage holder thingy got in the way. Again, this is because there isn't that much room behind the shifter linkage in the transmission tunnel.

Now, this isn't meant to be a list of complaints, it is just that reading from other descriptions online, I thought it would take about 20 minutes.

They way I ended up getting it all to go in there was to angle the transmission with the bell housing up, and working that up in place before bringing the back end up.

We used a variety of jacking apparatuses to accomplish these ends.

This is where we started off.

Good old Honda scissors jack we had sitting around. (It could have been my volvo one, though.) The nice thing about a scissors jack is that it goes almost flat, meaning you can get it underneath the transmission unlike our bottle or floor jack. So we started off, this way, and built it up bit by bit, sometimes using another jack, and sometimes using the wooden blocks as shown.


See, here we moved the jack around.

We ended, like I said, moving the bell housing up first, but we also roatated it about 45 degrees... um, bottom towards the passenger side. This is how we were able to get it up into position. Sorry... no pictures on this... it was too busy working on it to grab the camera...

Anyway, we got the input shaft past the fingers for the pressure plate, leveled out the transmission, then finally got the input shaft into the pilot bearing.

This is a picture of the final situation:

We've got three jacks going on here. The floor-jack is holding the bulk of the weight. The front green bottle jack is helping us adjust the pitch of the engine/transmission so that it will mate up better. And the scissors jack was what we used to adjust the height--that is to say, we'd adjust the height with the scissors jack, and then when we have it in the right place, bring the floor jack up to support the weight.

We could not seem to get the transmission flush with the engine, and had a about a half-inch gap. The solution to this was actually really easy--I just got one of the bell housing bolts, and drew it up flush that way. It went easy enough.

The next step was to attach the shifter linkage.

Before:

After:



After that, it I figured it was all down hill.

I was wrong
The hard part begins

The next part will not take so long to describe as it did to solve. All that was needed now was to bolt the drive shaft on, put the cross-member in place with the transmission mount. The driveshaft was easy. The cross-member/transmission mount proved not to be.

A complication I hadn't realized--the M46 transmission does not mount in the same place as the automatic. This isn't that big a deal--there are pre-threaded holes in the frame under there for other mounts. In theory, at least...



Notice anything interesting about this frame member? Some moron decided to jack on it. [To be fair, I've misplaced a jack from time to time as well. I'd think it is a good place to jack if I didn't know better.] The hole indicated with the green arrow is one of the two holes where the auto was mounted (the other hole is not visible in the picture) and the red arrows indicate where the manual needs to mount. Well, kind of... but I'll get to that in a minute.

I discovered that with the bent frame, the transmission mounted too high--so the shifter linkage hit the top of the transmission tunnel. Well, that was bad, but I could fix that with some shims and longer bolts. But there was a complication. The holes did not match up with the crossmember, by about a 1/2". I checked, checked, and re-checked, but they were an 1/2" off. When mounted in place, there wasn't enough room for the transmission mount.

Well, this stymied me for a couple days. Thus far, everything had gone as planned--there were some stalls due to wrong tools or difficult proceedures, but these parts simply did not fit together, and would not do so without some alteration.


After kicking around a couple of ideas I realized that I could slot out the holes in the cross-member, and it would work. If it had been longer than half an inch, or half an inch back instead of forward, it would have not worked, because I would have been out of metal. So, that is what I did.


This is the original mount. (As a note, the only difference between the auto cross-member and the manual is the presence of those two lips with holes in them for the clutch return spring on the manual cross-member.)

This is how I modified it.


Detail shots:





What I did was a bit more complicated than what I set out to do. I have a friend that restores cars (Bentleys actually), and you can see in the picture that the member has been heated. The problem was that the slots I was going to cut would go through a raised portion of the member. So, he got out his torch, and flattened the area. Then I used a metal punch to nib away at the metal (not always being perfectly accurate as you can tell by the pictures) and finished it up by using a die-grinder to clean up the edges.

Anyway, with that modification, longer bolts and some washers, it all went together.


As a note, the cross-member for the mount of the transmission, doesn't call for any shims, but using the shims from the auto transmission mounting cross-member (which does call for shims) put everything in the right place.

Also... I need to re-paint the cross-member at some point... but I needed the use of my car. So probably at Christmas, I'll drop the member and re-paint it.

With that I put the transmission up, and took it out for a drive, and it worked!


One Final Challenge

... Almost!

Over-drive would not work. This ended up being pretty easy to fix.
This reference was really useful:
VClassics Interactive - Archive
as was this:
Transmission-Manual

I traced it back to the relay using the techniques in the above pages. Fortunately, I could get to the relay through removing the glove compartment.


And when I pulled the really out of it's plastic box, it looked like this:


So, I re-flowed some solder onto it, and viola!


Put it back in, and my over-drive worked just fine.


Job, complete.


Hope some of this comes in handy to someone out there, or is at least interesting reading to someone.

 

Well, it's interesting for me to read at least.

 

Wow... well I definitely have my work cut out.

This will be a huge help though!

 

Wow great write up, I am currently preforming this same conversion. thankfully i have access to a shop with tranny mounts and such. Not that it will help not but if you wanted a better looking trans mounting plate you could probably find one off an old manual 240 that would fit perfectly. also did you get the shorter drive shaft rod for the M46?

I am very curious about your wiring set up. that is part of my repair i haven't tackled at all yet.

Really strong work man. how is she looking and driving now?

 

She drives very well. I did get the shorter drive-shaft needed. Actually, I got the whole rear end as well, but instead of switching out the whole driveshaft, I just put on the shorter portion that was needed. Theoretically, the pieces are balanced individually, so you should be able to swap parts without any issues. In reality, that may not always work, but I've had not vibration issues.

Did you get the wiring harness for the M46? or are you making something on your own? For the most part, you can just plug in the M46 wiring harness and go. You will not have a 5th gear indicator light, but it will work. (I am someday going to put in a 5th gear light... but other projects have put that on the back burner.)

 

I snagged a wiring harness out of a '92 244 in pick n pull, my green 5th gear light doesn't work(not even sure if this cluster has one it in yet) but i did wire up the little arrow light to work with the OD switch it was real easy. last little prong to the right as you look at the dash. was there a spare yellow wire on your Manual wiring harness this wire should work.. When i say work i mean that when the light is on, the OD is off. When i click the button in shifter, light goes off and OD goes on. I have been told thats OEM, Minus the little Green light that should come on and say 5th.

did you have any rust issues around the windscreen?

 

actually, OE on the manuals, the 5th light comes on when OD is enabled (eg, you're in 5th), and the uparrow lights when the ECU thinks you can shift up in any gear (based on RPM and MAF readings)

 

Ahhhhhh thanks, That actually makes much more sense. Happen to have a decent wiring diagram of how to make that happen? ill check my bently manual.

thanks