auto to manual conversion

2001LS8Sport said:
I'm here to tell you that unless you have a very deep 1st gear tranny, you are going to hate life if you use an aluminum flywheel in a heavy car with no more torque than you will have. The car just won't drive away from a light. You are going to have to rev the engine and slip the clutch. Watch Cup cars leave the pits on super speedways. They are geared tall and use light clutches and flywheels. They have a heck of a time leaving without killing the engine. Same principle. But they need the lighter reciprocating components to make every available horsepower to the wheels...not spinning a clutch and flywheel. It also gives them better control into a corner if necessary.
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I quess I wouldn't know anything after driving around for 11 yrs in two different four cylinder mustangs (88 & 91) that both had 11lb aluminum flywheels (down from the factory 19lbs). I put several hundred thousand miles on the two of them. While it is true that the needed to be slipped a little to get them out of the hole, the free reving of the motor when under way more than made up for that.

Its not all that hard to learn how 'launch' the car when you have limited torque.


By the way guy's I'm still trying to unload the old 88 stang so I have time and money for the swap.
 
JES_LS said:
I quess I wouldn't know anything after driving around for 11 yrs in two different four cylinder mustangs (88 & 91) that both had 11lb aluminum flywheels (down from the factory 19lbs). I put several hundred thousand miles on the two of them. While it is true that the needed to be slipped a little to get them out of the hole, the free reving of the motor when under way more than made up for that.

Its not all that hard to learn how 'launch' the car when you have limited torque.


By the way guy's I'm still trying to unload the old 88 stang so I have time and money for the swap.
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Nod-The idle speed can also be set higher if it makes launching easier. JES-LS; it looks like you are about 20 minutes away from me.

Ian
 
Light flywheels aren't so bad, you just have to know your friction point alot better. I've driven a few moderately weighted cars with them and no problem. I'm going to try one in my car if I can ever get it down the track again, I've got about 8 months of waiting on parts so far, not going to make it worse.

Has anyone figured out a non production trans that will work with minimal modifications in the LS platform, as this question is big on my list of things to overcome planning my turbo 3.0 ls down the road.
 
JES_LS said:
I quess I wouldn't know anything after driving around for 11 yrs in two different four cylinder mustangs (88 & 91) that both had 11lb aluminum flywheels (down from the factory 19lbs). I put several hundred thousand miles on the two of them. While it is true that the needed to be slipped a little to get them out of the hole, the free reving of the motor when under way more than made up for that.

Its not all that hard to learn how 'launch' the car when you have limited torque.


By the way guy's I'm still trying to unload the old 88 stang so I have time and money for the swap.
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Whatever. I have screwdrivers older than you've been driving 2.3's. Besides, if you read what you wrote, you just validated my point. And the trannys that came behind 2.3's were VERY low geared in first.
 
2001LS8Sport said:
Whatever. I have screwdrivers older than you've been driving 2.3's. Besides, if you read what you wrote, you just validated my point. And the trannys that came behind 2.3's were VERY low geared in first.
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I have a Starret micrometer that was my grandfather's. Unless anyone here is in their 80's-90's, I'm guessing that its older than anyone on this forum. :)

Ian
 
The trans behind the 2.3's is the just the old standard T5, the 4cyl version had a marginally shorter counter gear, remember the Mustang version also came with a 3.30+ first.

Anyhow, street tires don't offer enough grip to hold back even stock engines, any time I've ever driven a light flywheel wheelspin and traction are aways the problem anyway.
 
2001LS8Sport said:
Whatever. I have screwdrivers older than you've been driving 2.3's. Besides, if you read what you wrote, you just validated my point. And the trannys that came behind 2.3's were VERY low geared in first.
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Okay I have tools that are older than that as well. What does that have to do with anything?!?
As for the first gear in my 2.3's t5 transmissions, they were both 3.35 first gears with 3.45 and 3.27 in the rear axles.
how does that compare to the LS. Well lets see the ls has a 3.58 rear if it is a manual and the first gear in the trans is about the same a about 3.5 something.

I still think that the motor could use the freer reving ability of less flywheel mass for a positive result.

I mean its not like this motor will ever suddenly gain a pushrod type torque curve, it needs to rev by design to make power so why saddle it with a torque eating flywheel?
 
oh as for the trans, I just had the local bmw performance people go through it and 'freshen' it up a bit. They do getrags for bmw's all day and they guy there say's that since he changed out the syncro facing materials for better bmw materials it should be good for a 'tweaked jag six' <his words not mine>

so for now we'll see how that holds up, but tremmec is on my short replacement list.
 
If I can add my $.02. When I did the tranny swap in my 94 Mark, I went with an aluminum flywheel. Out on the highway it was spectacular, but around town I HATED it. Just trying to get a 4,100 pound car off the line smoothly was a trick in its self.

I know how to drive, and have been driving stick shifts for a while, but that was just plain out nasty. After I went with the billet steel wheel, I have had no problems. The extra inertia really helps.


There is a little 1st hand experience. Hope it helps.




Mike
 
I guess its all related to how comfortable you are holding the clutch in the friction zone.

I've had many small engined fairly heavy cars and I always felt most comfortable with a lighter than stock flywheel to let the motor rev.

I had one in my six cylnder 68 stang, one in my triumph tr7/8 spider, one in each of my four cylinder lx's, one in the chevy monza, one in the 84 camaro, one in the scorpio (even after I scored the sappire rs driveline), and definitely one in the rx7.

I dunno maybe is something that I grew used to from my early motorcycle riding days.
Riding as a courier in philly on 350cc two strokes with a 245lb rider wearing, thirty pounds of crash armour and carrying another 45-60 lbs of packages+radio, really taught me how to launch a heavy vehicle with limited torque by really using the early part of the friction zone.

something to think about, how do your clutches wear? Unless it fails due to some obvious manufacturing defects, mine always wear out evenly. Also my flywheels generally do not show a lot of heat damage unlike many of my friends.
I have worked on other friends that consistantly wear/burn the flywheel side.
 
Not that it relevant to this conversation but did anyone read Kevin Cameron's article on lightened flywheels in this months Cycle World. It seems that in engines with low cylinder count (singles, twins) engines with lightened flywheels will rev quicker but make less power due to crankshaft speed variations causing valve timing to vary. Bike racers have found that while acceleration slightly greater with the lightened flywheel the top speed was lower.

As I said not relevant to this topic but interesting non the less.
 
94m5 said:
If I can add my $.02. When I did the tranny swap in my 94 Mark, I went with an aluminum flywheel. Out on the highway it was spectacular, but around town I HATED it. Just trying to get a 4,100 pound car off the line smoothly was a trick in its self.

I know how to drive, and have been driving stick shifts for a while, but that was just plain out nasty. After I went with the billet steel wheel, I have had no problems. The extra inertia really helps.


There is a little 1st hand experience. Hope it helps.




Mike
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My point exactly. I don't have the graphs to back me up, but I'm betting the 4.6 has a better torque rating down low too. I've owned at least a half a dozen 32V 4.6 engines and two of the 3.9's. As smooth as the 4.6 is (buttermilk is a term I've heard used to describe it), the 3.9 is smoother yet. But the 4.6 outperforms it...as it should.

Now put that same flywheel in a car that weighs near as much with less torque and see what you have. It will be miserable around town.
 
I sold my home to a guy that works for Jasper Transmissions and we spoke abut it for alittle while after the sale of the home was completed. He warned against it fearing an electronic fiasco.

I think we spokeabout this before but would we not be able to avert this problem simply by changing the auto tranny setting in the pcm to manual?
 
I did a converstion from auto to manual on my 95 accord a couple years ago. After it was all said an done, I have to say I loved it. But I would never do it again. With all the money I spend on parts and labor, I could have just bought myself a manual to begin with.
 
Akkord29 said:
I did a converstion from auto to manual on my 95 accord a couple years ago. After it was all said an done, I have to say I loved it. But I would never do it again. With all the money I spend on parts and labor, I could have just bought myself a manual to begin with.
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Yeah I am thinking considering the cost of an 00 to 02 LS it would hardly be a cost permissive project but JES_LS has scored some parts on the cheap by shopping around. It depends if you pay counter price or ge a hook up from a recycle yard or ebay.
 
The easy way if you have a 6cylinder car already that had a production year of a manual trans. Then its just get a tear tag number for a manual trans car, flash the PCM and forget about it. Obviously this isn't going to work for the v8 cars, but I would bet money manual trans provisions are setup in the v8 calibrations also.
 
Putter-GLHT said:
The easy way if you have a 6cylinder car already that had a production year of a manual trans. Then its just get a tear tag number for a manual trans car, flash the PCM and forget about it. Obviously this isn't going to work for the v8 cars, but I would bet money manual trans provisions are setup in the v8 calibrations also.
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You'd be wrong. The V8 pcm was never calibrated for a manual tranny.
 
JES_LS said:
Yeah Motts, Ford wants way too much for their standard flywheel and a lightweight version would help.

Hey Noah, I have been in the part fiche for the lincolns and on torries site.
The LS uses a common reservoir for the hydraulic fluid, so we will need to get a new reservior and a clutch master cylinder. Still trying to get some info on the hose to the slave cylinder on the LS. If it nothing more than a flare or banjo fitting on both ends,I will just make up a SS Braided hose assembly for our cars, Any one interested in that?
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I've done plenty of work with flywheels and swaps on RX-7's, and although I don't have any info on the flywheels/ring gear/counterweights used on the Lincoln LS, I have an idea...

On the RX-7's, for any aftermarket flywheel, you would simply buy a counterweight from an automatic transmission car (that would do a good chunk of balancing the engine on these cars, whereas a flywheel would normally balance it in a manual). THEN, you would simply bolt your choice from a myriad of steel, aluminum, whatever, flywheels onto the six bolt hols in the counterweight. That flywheel could be 400mm wide, 800mm wide, 3600mm wide, whatever you wanted. I believe that this setup was fine to well over 800+ rear wheel hp on 3-rotor cars, and probably much farther.

Is there anything similar that can be done with the LS? One universal counterweight (or something that can have another flywheel bolted to the back of it) for the V8 engine? That way you can have just the counterweight part there, and bolt on a flywheel for whatever the heck kind of transmission/bellhousing you want.
 
yeah I'm interested too, this is the first I've read this thread and wonder if anyone has done it.

It would be a great money maker to figure this out and offer a package/installation. I am in Jersey and already have a stock manual. I'd be interested in pitching in if needed.
 
The last time someone asked, JES has just changed jobs, so cash was a limiting factor that was preventing pursuit of this project. That was (I think) in October, so I wouldn't expect that to have changed yet. If you'll search, you should find his response to this effect around here somewhere.
 
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