I've been doing a little searching for an 850 turbo or R wagon and if what I see on the Kelly Blue Book website is correct, they did not offer manual transmission versions of these cars. That seems strange to me considering they are the preformance versions of the car. Anyway, if this is true, how hard (or possible as the case may be) is it to swap the tranny with one of the 5 spds from the base model car? I've seen them on car-part and they're not that expensive, its just that I don't want to do a tranny swap if I don't have to. Thanks.

edit: Looks like Wikipedia says they did come in 5spd...who's correct?

 

In the US they did not come manual. Not sure about other parts of the world.

 

Damnit. Anyone know how hard a tranny swap is on one of these cars?

 

I also wrote a response to this in another forum. Please only ask the question in one forum, not the same question in multiple forums. I did go into some detail about the five speed in my other response.

As far as swapping it looks like a real big job to me, but it's doable. Like I said in the other response, I would be looking for a 98 V70 T5M.

 

doing an auto-to-manual swap, good luck mate. Not only is it a hell of a task on any car where there are even KITS for it (my old 02 camaro, nissan 240SX) on a car like this? Not to flame you dude, but you're in for a hell of a project. Kinda like boldly going where no Swede has gone before.

 

Yeah, I don't think I'm going to get an 850 now, I won't drive an auto. I'm just used to hondas where you just pull the parts and swap them. No B.S. I'll keep an eye out for a '98 v70R but I'm not going to hold my breath.

There is no way I would feel comfortable racing a car with an auto tranny, it just doesn't have the control I want.

 

I still don't understand why people think Auto's don't give them control. I'll take an auto with a turbo any day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dgIUCdAhmA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jRdqoYUN7g

Click here to see Video

but to each their own.

 

There's been a couple people who've swaped the 5 speed.

In fact, there was one locally but I heard after he sold it the next owner put an 18t in there and it blew the motor/transmission, I forget which. I think the transmission.

 

I honestly don't care how fast the car goes in a straight line. My CRX only ran a paltry 15 sec 1/4 mile, but I was kicking the crap out of supercharged Porsches and Corvettes on the AutoX course. There is a reason you will never see an automatic Touring car on the race track. A computer simply can't figure out exactly where to shift unless you're accelerating in a straight line. That and having a direct mechanical connection (hydrolics don't count) between the car and the tires provides more control of a car at corner entry and exit.

About the swap, my main fear is that the manual tranny would be weaker than the auto. I'm also sick of driving hybrid cars. Now that I think about it, swapping it would be stupid anyway since it would kick me out of STU and put me in Street Mod, where I'd be competing against highly modified M3's and my buddy's full race Civic (one of the fastest SM cars in Minnesota). I think I'll just keep an eye out for a '98 v70R

 

The last link I posted was not about a straight line

But like I said, to each his own.

 

Nope, but I'll bet you the reason he's not running a manual tranny is that it would bump his classing. That's an SCCA video. I have never seen a professional track car (as in not club sport) that is automatic. I'm sure there are 1 or 2 anomalies, but 99% of road race cars run manual trannys for a reason.

 

actually the manual tranny (M56 or M66) are stronger than the auto trannys. Many people have done it over on volvospeed.com. They have many threads about auto-manual swap, you should check them out.

Volvospeed ismore performance oriented than this site. But not as nice I should warn you haha

 

The Manual tranny is stronger. And typically, manuals are stronger for most cars...

But Citizen, just curious, where in MN are you from and what do you drive right now?

 

I'm currently studying Mechanical Engineering at the U of M in the Twin Cities. For a while I was driving a b16 swapped CRX HF but I'm trying to sell it to start another project. In the mean time I've been driving a Subaru Legacy wagon...manual...but pretty boring to drive. I've looked into an STI swap for it, but it looks like it would end up being too expensive and I'm kind of sick of dealing with hybrid cars. I was hoping that the 850 Turbo would be a nice compromise between the practicality of the Subaru and the fun of the CRX. Unfortunatly, if that requires me to do a lot of modification to the car it's probably not very feasible. I will look around on volvospeed and see how hard the tranny swap is, but I'm guessing it's more work that I want to do on my dirt driveway. I'd like to say thanks to you guys for helping me out, there's a lot to learn about every new platform.

 

Just curious, are you by anychance on MNSC?

Mnsportcompacts?

 

No, I don't frequent there, although I am a member. The main car forums I reside at are hondaswap.com, mnautox.com andcrxcommunity.com.

 

Oh gotcha. I haven't done the Autox thing yet.

Do a lot of Volvos do Autox locally? How well do they do?

 

You really should go autoxing some time. It's a total f***ing blast. Granted I'm sure track racing is more fun, but AutoX only costs $20 + tire wear. I haven't seen any Volvos at any of the events that I've been to, mostly a lot of Miatas, 3 series BMW's and Sti's.

 

Only thing is that Volvos are kind of boat like.

I don't know how well these cars would do in such an event...

 

I'm not sure if the 98 V70 R came in a five speed. I said a 98 V70 T5 did come with a five speed. The V70R is an AWD car with a high pressure turbo, the T5 has high pressure turbo but FWD.