Now that the “easy” part was done we needed to plan out the engine swap. My house was not really the best place to do this. A friend was kind enough to offer us his climate controlled garage so we packed up the cars and sent them over.

The first few days saw a lot of progress. Front ends, exhausts, drive shafts, transfer cases, all removed.

It was a pretty great feeling to remove the automatic shifter and toss it.

We now get our first chance to see the dreaded shifter support arm bracket. We knew this was going to be a pain to deal with. The first step was to shove it up there and get a feel for what we were up against.

Enough of that for now. It was time to pull our first engine! We borrowed an engine hoist and married it with a Harbor Fright balancer. Technically the balancer worked but it was a serious pain to adjust it. Once they were out of the car we separated the transmission and loaded them up on the truck.

This seemed like such an accomplishment. At the end of the day I brought this home with the intention of dropping it off at the scrap yard before work the next morning. It turns out we forgot to drain the oil from the engine, front diff, and transmission so will have to wait until we have time to pick it up again.

 

Next up, we had to lower the wreck, rotate it, pull its engine, remount the front subframe (so we can use the car dollys), and rotate it back again. Apparently the new hourglass shape of the car spread the front frame rails so we had to use a ratchet strap to pull them in a bit so it could be mounted.

Time to split up. Rear main seal and new clutch is installed while working on the clutch switch.

 

Move front subframe over as the wrecked car had a new steering rack and bushings. Also swapped the brakes.

Finish up the transmission and attach it to the engine. Enlist my son’s boss to help install the engine as he happened to be at the right place at the right time.

 

The absolute worst part about an xi auto to manual swap is the shifter support arm. The xi manual has a raised portion of the transmission tunnel in order to give room for the shifter support arm to go over the transfer case. The automatic doesn’t have this so if you want everything to mount correctly you must cut a hole. We did remove the raised section in case we ever remove the dash again and want to weld it into place.

Now to cut the hole…. First use the template created earlier to check the size of the raised section, sit in the official cutting position, and cut like hell trying to avoid the thousand wires.

Here you can see the problem this is solving.

Now hold it all in place and check the shifter location.

Unfortunately the shifter is sitting too high and to the right. We didn’t have a vise to use so we ended up using a big adjustable wrench and the floor jack pole to bend the bottom of the shifter. It was a perfect fit!

 

So I’m not quite sure why these photos are before installing the bracket. I’m sure the bracket was installed first before we bent anything but the photos order on my phone doesn’t show that. Weird. Anyway, we installed the transfer case and measured the height of the transmission and shifter support arm so that we could install the bracket in the correct position. Then we removed the transfer case, drilled holes, and used rivets to install the bracket. This is very solid right now but if we end up with play later we might weld the bracket or use panel bond with new rivets. Also, to protect the recently cut metal we used a can of Rustoleum that happened to be nearby. It turns out if we had looked a little harder we would have found a can of black, but the yellow isn’t the end of the world.

The end result actually looks about perfect. All of the gears feel like they are in the correct position. The shifter looks a little tall here but once the shift boot and ZHP shift knob is installed it looks perfect.

It was time to take a small break to finally drain the fluids and run to the scrap yard.

 

Great stuff, good read. Thanks for sharing. I have some questions please.

You didn't weld the raised tunnel section to the new car. Do you feel the big hole gives more sound? Or perhaps moisture forming because of the opening?

Why was the shifter not centered without bending it? Should one always bent the shifter when doing this swap?

 

At this point it was almost 2 weeks since we had access to the garage and we were flying out the next day to attend speed week on the Bonneville Salt Flats. We needed to finish quickly if we wanted to be done in time. We installed the front end and the exhaust and drove the car home with a borrowed dealer plate!

A quick trip to the salt and we were back. Just need to get rid of the carcass and clean up.

The tow driver thought I was crazy for not wanting to damage the sidewalk outside the garage but I had no intention of leaving lasting marks and potentially not being invited to use the garage in the future. He was kind enough to load the rest of the car in the street.

 

We had a handful of fault codes to resolve but they were not too difficult. My dealer friend technically bought the car so we still need to get the title in our name before it can be registered but it is now all ready to go. Once it is legal to drive we will take it for paint correction and an ozone treatment.

 

Great write up. That was a ton of work you and your son completed. And my hat is off to a great friend with a beautiful garage. Love that pic of the parts in the loo!

 

A very many kudos to you and your son for persevering through a sh*t situation and coming out with a beautiful car. I remember when you posted the wreck, great to see you on the other side, and so soon.

 

Thank you both. We were definitely on a tight schedule to get this done. My wife didn’t want the wreck at the house and we only had a couple weeks at the garage. We still both worked our jobs full time so this was done during nights and weekends.

In all fairness though, 90% of the work was done by my son. He works as a BMW mechanic so he knows his way around these cars and worked very quickly. I definitely did some of the work but my primary job was to keep us organized and on time. It also gave me the time to take pictures constantly [emoji2].

Since bringing the car home we have learned what cutting away sound deadening to install the bracket and putting a big hole in the trans tunnel can do for road noise! We did some research on sound deadening and he ended up buying a few things to help reduce the noise. It is actually back to nearly stock noise level but I have no pictures. I’ll see about getting some and updating this thread.

 

Hey Dutch, I wish you got those fenders and hood off that shell, do you still happen to have the MT1 front bumper?

 

Great writeup! I’m in the middle of this shifter nightmare. Chassis mounted was my plan, but it is was too long under the pivot and hits the transfer case. I’m going to cut open the trans tunnel now as you did, but I don’t understand what you did for the rear shifter carrier bushing. I cut the stock bracket out of my donor car but it’s angled to bolt to the raised part of the 6-speed donor car. It also doesn’t look like your bracket (which is long). Any help?

 

Hey bro it looks like you bent your bracket.. you see the two holes, that should be facing down like the single hole. I will try to post pics this afternoon and to mount it I will link you to another thread where you will make 1/4 sized holes w a drilled and just line this up with bolts and have one person in the cabin screwing it on.