Random question that might drive a decision later
I'm finding many many automatic NC Miatas. The price, $5,000-9,000, is usually half the price of a comparable manual trans.
Combined with the fact that these autos are usually driven by the bluehairs down here, they are mint. It has made me wonder how feasible it would be to get one and grab parts for a manual swap.
What sort of prices would you be looking at with that?
The RX-8 was similar work, and the general wisdom was: just buy the manual car in the first place.
Going from memory, and I'm sure Keith will have the exact answer, but its: Changing multiple wiring harnesses, ECU, putting in the pedals, cylinder, transmission, etc. It's tearing quite a bit of the interior out and putting in the manual bits.
In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :
For the NC2/3 you are also giving up the engine with forged internals by starting with an auto.
Might as well do a 2.5 swap while you've got the trans out...
I haven't looked into it. The NC is a CAN platform but a fairly simple one. Still, the Transmission Control Module is talking to the Powertrain Control Module and "other module" (that's what it says in the diagram!) via CAN. So you may run into unexpected malfunctions when you remove the TCM signals from the network.
Might be an interesting project to try, but it's a far cry from doing it to the much less sophisticated 1990-93 cars.
pointofdeparture said:In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :
For the NC2/3 you are also giving up the engine with forged internals by starting with an auto.
As Keith said, would probably end up with the 2.5 swap at that time.
Keith Tanner said:Might be an interesting project to try, but it's a far cry from doing it to the much less sophisticated 1990-93 cars.
Starting to think you'd almost require a totaled manual trans car, at that point any viability is probably out the window from a saving money standpoint
I wouldn't go that far. Doing a complete transplant of everything is the high effort, low brain technique. It would be much more interesting to change out the hard parts (transmission, pedal, shifter, which should mostly bolt in) and then figure out how to keep the electronics happy - if necessary. You might just have to send a standard "I'm alive" signal pretending to be the TCM, and that's pretty easy to figure out. The NC platform is not sophisticated compared to the ND.
Like I said, it would be an interesting project. Not bad interesting, but a challenge.
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