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The 6MT is installed and fully functional, but I had to make a larger hole for the shifter since the 6MT is a little longer. The hole was a very rough (as you can see in my title image), so I cleaned up the cuts to make them straight and smoothed all the edges (I forgot to take a picture of the cleaned up hole). I then made a cardboard template for a base plate so I could install the rubber shifter cover from the 6MT. I transferred the cardboard template to a piece of steel, cut it out, bent and welded it. It now installed on the transmission tunnel with 4 bolts, allows easy access to the top of the transmission, and will keep out most of the air/water from under the car.

Today I finished all rear suspension work. I too a picture to show the 4 different bushings that were replaced on each rear knuckle. Bushings 1-3 are not very difficult, but bushing 4 is in a very awkward location and it is difficult to position it in the press. I had to weld a small fixture to hold the knuckle in the press. I'm glad that job is finished!

Today I completely finished the driver side of the rear suspension and also removed the passenger side rear knuckle to finish tomorrow. I changed the OEM eccentric bolts that allow small adjustment to the rear suspension settings to bolts that lock out the eccentric bolt adjustments. You can see the bolts side by side in the title image. They exist in 2 places on each side and are the "cam" type bolts that rotate off center. My entire suspension is now fully adjustable, each arm has adjustments, so these bolts are no longer needed.

The bolt kit is very simple, it uses square aluminum spacers (on each side of the bolt) that fit inside the small indentation on the subframe. The square spacers fit tightly and no longer rotate, so all adjustments will be done by the SPL suspension arms. This will prevent the OEM eccentric bolts from changing settings if a large bump or pothole is hit, and makes fine tuning the alignment very predictable.

Here you can see the the lock out bolt installed and part of the SPL adjustable arm.

Today I started to work on the rear knuckles. I purchased SPL monoball spherical bushings to replace all 4 bushings on the rear knuckles. They are supposed to make the car much tighter in the rear. Since I am working on the rear, I decided to replace the rear wheel bushings as well.

Here you can see one of the old bushings I pressed out of the rear knuckle. Next to it is the new SPL monoball bearing. It is aluminum. 3 out of the 4 bushings are not very difficult to replace, but one bushing is very difficult to remove!


This is the new wheel bearing pressed on the old wheel hub.

I finished the 6MT swap this weekend! The wiring was not very difficult, but I did find a small error in the wiring diagram listed in the FSM. The wire for the cruise control (park/neutral safety switch) was listed as pin 102 on the ECM. It should be a green wire with orange stripe, but 102 is a blue wire that is part of the CAN system... pin 94 is the green wire with orange stripe, so the position was switched!



All other wiring was pretty easy, my reverse lights and my clutch pedal switch are all working properly! Unfortunately my car has been sitting a very long time and is no longer registered or insured, so I can't test drive it on the street lol. I was driving it up and down my driveway, and everything seems to work properly. I will tow it to the tuning shop and have them check it and tune it on the dyno.

Since I had to do wiring, I decided to clean up some additional wiring. I removed the dashboard so I could access all the wiring harnesses. With the dashboard and center area removed, I removed the blower motor and the air conditioning control unit. I have no air conditioning compressor or condenser, so I have no need for the blower motor or ac control unit. The small heater core is still installed, I did not want to remove it since some members have experienced cooling issues after removing it. I will research this more.

I will finish all the wiring and then move onto the rear of the car. I have some rear knuckle spherical bearings that will replace the bushings. I will also install a new y-pipe and test pipes. Once all parts are installed I will take the car to the tuner!