ENG: auto to 5spd conversion

[ChampCoupe]

GENERAL LIST
1. 5 speed transmission (F22, F23, H22, H23)
2. 5 speed starter (90-02 Accord 92-02 Prelude)
3. 5 speed shifter assembly w/ shifter cables (90-97 Accord, 92-96 Prelude)
4. 5 speed drivers side axle (your year accord, but from 5-spd version)
5. 5 speed intermediate shaft (your year accord, but from 5-spd version)
6. 5 speed clutch pedal assembly (90-97 Accord, 92-96 Prelude)
7. 5 speed brake pedal arm (90-93 Accord, 94-97 Accord)
8. Clutch master cylinder w/ reservoir and lines (90-97 Accord 92-96 Prelude)
9. Clutch line from Clutch master cylinder to clutch dampener (90-97 Accord 92-96 Prelude)
10. Clutch dampener assembly (90-97 Accord 92-96 Prelude)
11. Clutch line from Clutch dampener to 5 speed tranny (90-97 Accord 92-96 Prelude)
12. Clutch line from 5 speed tranny to slave cylinder (90-97 Accord 92-96 Prelude)
13. Slave cylinder (90-97 Accord 92-96 Prelude)
14. Clutch (90-02 Accord 92-01 Prelude)
15. Flywheel (90-02 Accord 92-01 Prelude)
16. 5 speed mount (Your year, 5-spd version) more info on this here: http://www.cb7tuner.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=8873
17. 5 speed mount bracket (go to Honda - tell them to look for the bracket that is welded on the car - part is S.O.P and costs 15-25.00) (see notes)
18. MIG WELDER (see notes)
19. BOLTS: 8 Flywheel Bolts, 6 Pressure Plate Bolts, 3 Intermediate Shaft Bolts, 1 Long Tranny Bolt
20. Recommended: HELMS Service Manual (www.helminc.com)

DISASSEMBLY
Jack up the front of your car and place a jackstand on each side of the car as high as possible. You can go ahead and lower the jack and move it to the side. Once this is done, we’ll move to the inside and prep the interior. Take this time to go ahead and remove the armrest console, cupholder, center console bezel (black piece), steering column cover, and your driver’s seat. While you’re at it, go ahead and unbolt the ecu shield under the passenger’s footrest and undo your ecu. Keep in mind to keep all your screws and bolts in multiple Ziploc bags so you don’t mix them up and don’t lose any either.
Now move to your engine bay. Go ahead and disconnect your battery and remove it and the battery tray underneath. Undo your cold air intake, or your intake assembly now. You will not need to remove your distributor but unbolt your automatic starter at this time.

Take this chance to drain your auto tranny fluid and work on other things. Take the wheels off and set them aside. Remove the axle nut (36mm). (note: this nut is at 180 lb-ft, the best way to remove the bolt is to put an extension pipe on the socket wrench you are using, works great, have someone stomp on the brakes as you loosen it) I used and ended up breaking about 5 breaker bars trying to get mine off.

It is imperative to get the driver’s side nut off so work on this side first. The passenger’s side is not so imperative and is actually time-saving to not do it. I will explain why soon. Remove the lower ball joint cotter pin and nut (17mm) on both sides. Take a floor jack and start to raise the car up on the lower knuckle so the ball joint pops out or you can use a ball joint separator (looks like a fork). When you have the ball joint removed, remove the driver’s side axle. At this point, you can either also remove the passenger’s side axle is you removed the nut, or you’ll just lift up the hub with the axle attached and place a jackstand under it to hold it aside.

To pry the axles from the tranny, insert a decent size flat head screwdriver in-between the axle and the tranny, then just pop it. It will pop out of socket, then you can pull it out the rest of the way. Be sure to keep pressure on the ends of the axles because if the cv joints come apart its not fun putting them back together. Unbolt most of the bolts holding the lower splash guard on the passenger’s side and swing it around to the left. Remove the passenger side radius rod (suspension piece right under the tranny), but don’t lose the bushings or shims.

By this time at least, you can remove the drained fluid from under the car. You do not need to drop the centerbeam to do the tranny swap. Since you’re still under the engine go ahead and undo all the electrical connectors around the tranny area and everything that attaches so. Try to avoid disconnecting the vacuum lines because by the time you’re putting it back together you’ll forget how many you disconnected.

Also undo the shift cable and torque converter cover from the auto tranny from underneath. At this point crawl underneath the car more, make sure you have another person to watch you, you’ll be unbolting the heat shield above the cat so that you can loosen two or three of the bolts holding the auto shifter assembly in. You don’t need to unbolt the cat or anything. All hangars can still remain on.

Now you have to remove each of the 8 bolts that hold the torque converter to the flex plate. This is done 1 or 2 at a time, and then you must rotate the crank to get to the next couple. It’s easier to have one person at the crank and ratcheting at it while one person undoes the 8 bolts. Make sure you have something holding the tranny (jack or lift). Remove the tranny bell housing bolts from both sides (tranny into engine side and engine into tranny side) and remove the tranny mount. To gain access to one of the tranny bell bolts you need to undo the oil filter. Just unscrew it and place it aside, the oil loss will be minimal. Drop the tranny slowly. Be careful because it's ridiculously heavy. You’ll lower the tranny and swing it out through the passenger’s side wheel well. Just keep shimmying and rotating it over until you have it completely out. Remove the 8 bolts holding the flex plate to the block. They are 17 mm 12 point sockets.

[ChampCoupe]

MOUNTS
Here I’ll go into the problems and confusion with the 5spd swap engine and tranny mounts. Regardless, you need the 5spd tranny mount for your car.
The biggest concern for the mounts is that the engine does not sit straight or flat horizontally when you use the hole on the tranny bracket where the auto one went through. This makes the engine askew and will cause you to more likely break axles more often. The solution is a choice of two. 1) You can purchase the actual tranny bracket from Honda and unweld the auto one and reweld the 5spd one. 2) You can use an ExplicitSpeedPerformance Auto-to-Manual transmission mount.

Now if you don’t have a welder handy it’s kind of hard to tow your car to and from a weld shop, so most people opt for the second and it has worked quite well.

There’s quite a bit of conflict over the rear engine mount and bracket. The 5spd one has one extra hole near the middle of the bracket for an additional bolt from the engine to the tranny. The consensus is that LX and EX mounts separately and only matches up with mated LX and EX mount brackets i.e. LX mount--> LX bracket EX mount--> EX bracket. However, I was sent the wrong rear motor mount, and I ended up using my auto rear engine mount and bracket and it worked perfectly fine and my engine sits level and complete. The one less bolt shouldn’t be a concern because after all your auto tranny uses the same number of bolts as well. You keep the same front mount and driver’s side mount and wont need to undo them at all. If you undo the auto mount and use 5spd mounts, you can just undo the diaphragm and vacuum fittings and plug the ones that are attached to the mount. Then you would just bolt up the bracket and the mount.

CLUTCH MASTER CYLINDER/CLUTCH PEDAL
the hole is precut and the spacers are already mounted to the firewall.
(5th gen only)
For the clutch master cylinder, you need to drill two mounting holes out (for the two studs on the master cylinder) and one large hole for the actual cylinder and plunger. On the cabin side, you will need to use two 12mm nuts as spacers on the master cylinder studs for it to sit right. The 5spd firewall has those spacers already prewelded in comparison to a nice flat firewall on the auto. Drill the two stud holes out. For the big plunger hole I just drilled fair sized holes all along the outside edge of the imprinted hole and then took a small drill bit to drill out the material in between each hole. Afterwards take a dremel to clean it up or some sandpaper.

[ChampCoupe]

BRAKE PEDAL
There’s always been controversy whether you can use the prelude arm or not. Many people have since then found that you can’t. It hits the steering column cover apparently. Now the problem is whether you can use the 90-93 pedal or only the 94-97. Obviously you can use the 5th gen for the 5th gen swap. You can however use the 4th gen accord 5spd brake pedal as well with slight modification. The 4th gen brake pedal actually curves around the steering column the opposite way to the left of it instead of right like the 5th gen.

To swap the brake pedal, you have to remove the old one first. This involves getting the cotter pin and its bolt out and separating the brake master cylinder plunger U bracket from the pedal. Then you undo the springs. Mind you the spring is easy to take out and much more difficult to put in, especially lying on your back under the steering column for a good hour plus at a time. I found it much easier to take out the whole assembly and swing it out over the steering column put on the new brake pedal outside and latch on the spring and then put it back together. To do so, you must undo the gas pedal cotter pin bolt and the spring (which is fairly loose) and the throttle cable attached to the top of the pedal. Undo all the nuts holding the bracket assembly. Your auto brake pedal should be off by now. Undo the wire connector plug for the brake switch and also don’t forget the nuts on top of the bracket assembly including a stiffener brace. Now swing it out, reattach the 5spd brake pedal with the spring. Swing it back in, reattach the gas pedal, spring, and cotter pins for both and replace all the nuts that you took off. Now you’re in business. This was actually a lot faster than my worthless two hours trying to put the damn spring back on in the first place.

[ChampCoupe]

Now onto the wiring for the reverse lights, key removal, and ignition. Unbolt the remaining bolts for the auto shifter assembly and undo all the connectors that are plugged into it. The auto shift cable will also come out from the hole inside your middle console. On the driver’s side of the shifter assembly on the side is a white clip thing. Adjust the slider so it’s at the very front or in “P”ark. Now unscrew this white shift selector from the shifter assembly. You will need to do some wiring with it. Refer to the service manual diagram.

You don’t need the auto shift selector, but it’s nice to just have it in case one day you swap back, unlikely but you never know. It was also easier for me to keep everything organized.
Clutch safety switch goes to L and M (OPTIONAL, this just allows you to have the standard safety feature where you must clutch in to start the car, I bypassed this by just jumping L and M together) Just make sure that if you solder L and M together you will be able to start your car without the clutch and if you’re in gear your car will shift forward or reverse and you may hit parked cars. Reverse switch from tranny goes to G and H and the order/colors don’t matter. It’s just closing the loop. Jump F and I to take your key out (just solder them together or butt connect them). If you’re better with colors… “For reverse lights, extend the yellow and green/black wires from auto shifter selector to the wires on the reverse light switch on the tranny. ( colors do not matter, its just completing the circuit). For the clutch switch, extend the big white/black and white/red wires from auto shifter selector to the blue/red and blue/black(I think) wires on the clutch switch. For the ignition key, hardwire the green/white and black wires together. For cruise control, extend the pink and black (same black as ignition) wires from auto shifter selector to the pink and black wires on the other clutch switch.” (Thanks to Phat4drVtec from h-t.) Cruise control is also optional, and most people don’t use it anyhow, but that’s what the other switch on the clutch pedal assembly is for. Reconnect the still existing plugs and just push the shift selector to the inside of the middle console.

[ChampCoupe]

ASSEMBLY
Bolt up the new flywheel with the new bolts you have because the flex plate bolts are too short. Make sure you torque this down properly. Put in your clutch and use the alignment tool to center the clutch with the flywheel. Torque down the pressure plate bolts accordingly. For both of these you may need someone to hold the crank pulley still.

Bolt up your slave cylinder to the transmission as well as the shift linkage bracket. Make sure your Vehicle Speed Sensor(VSS) is there as well as the reverse sensor near the front of the tranny.

Before you shimmy the tranny underneath again, we will get the clutch line hoses and dampener in. There are two ways to go about doing this. One, you’ll have the clutch hardline (13) from the master cylinder that routes to the dampener into a rubber line (15) to a banjo bolt to (12) which bolts to the tranny to another hardline (19) to the slave cylinder.

Many people have actually ran fine for quite awhile without using the dampener of which I am included. How we do have done this is the second and I think much easier solution and possibly much cheaper. Order a 8 ft -3an stainless steel line with one end a 10mm screw fitting and one 12mm screw fitting. The 12mm will be on the master cylinder side and 10mm for the slave. 8 ft will have plenty of slack also for you route whichever way you please. Go ahead and screw in the line to the master cylinder. It's actually easier if you already have it attached when you put the master cylinder in the first time.

If you don’t have a ss line source near you, you can order from www.bonacoinc.com and they should remember my order. This shouldn’t be a concern either because on newer Hondas they’ve completely done away with the dampener. Anyhow either way you do it, connect everything on the master cylinder and route it along the firewall as you see fit. Your reverse light wires should be tucked away somewhere now too. Shimmy the tranny in again and jack it up. Its very important to center it, you don’t want a good 80-100 lbs falling on your foot or something. Now you have to line it up with the engine. The bell housing exterior may not match perfectly or it may to the engine. I used an EX tranny with my LX motor for the better gear ratios and found that it was slightly off. Anyhow try to get it as flush as possible and try to hand tighten a couple of the bell housing bolts you undid from before. Make sure you get all of them including the ones on the backside near the oil filter. Reinstall the oil filter. If the tranny doesn’t go in, you may need to relower it and redo the alignment of the clutch. Try to get your tranny mount to sit on your tranny at this point too and just have it loosely between the two sides of the tranny mount bracket. Once the tranny is up, go ahead and screw in the clutch line to the slave cylinder. Also while underneath the car you can bolt up the intermediate shaft to the tranny with three intermediate shaft bolts. Plug in your VSS plug on the back and wire up the reverse switch to the wires you extended from the shift selector inside.

SHIFTER ASSEMBLY / CABLES
To run the shifter cables, you push the same cables through where your auto ones came out. Bolt down the shifter assembly. To my knowledge, the prelude cables go with the prelude assembly and the accord ones with the accord assembly, but they may be interchangeable. Once you get the cables out to the bottom of the car, go underneath and rebolt the two bolts behind the heat shield, just bend the heat shield back and use a small socket and ratchet (10mm). From there, you will need the help of a friend to route them OVER the rear mount but underneath the intake manifold. You will need to run them through the shifter linkage bracket and use two C clips to hold them into the groove on the bracket and the notch on the cables. If you don’t do this you wont be able to shift in and out of gears and it will be sloppy as hell. Once you get it to reach use appropriate washers (I used a combination of them from home depot, metal and plastic as per helms) and then use cotter pins to secure the cables.

[ChampCoupe]

Tranny Bracket Fabrication
I wont dwell into using the weld method because frankly its more expensive and not adequate enough of reason to justify having the trouble to weld. The second solution of using a pre-made drop in piece is much more rational. See this thread for links to more info: http://www.cb7tuner.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=8873

REMAINDER ASSEMBLY
Go ahead and bolt up the 5spd starter now and reattach the ground and positive cables. The positive cable is a small female plug and the ground is a ground loop that you just bolt on. You will need the long bolt that goes through the starter, tranny, and into the engine.

You can lower the jackstand from the passenger’s side hub if you didn’t take out the axle or if you did replace it and stick it into the tranny, but make sure it is completely in without any splines showing. Redo the balljoint and assembly the knuckle back together. Rebolt on the radius rod and appropriately order the bushing and shims and washers on both sides of the crossmember. Now TORQUE down this radius rod nut. I drove without knowing my nut fell out on the freeway for two weeks and my caster was constantly changing while I drove. If need be, use some blue threadlock for assurance, do NOT use red threadlock, those are permanent. You can now switch to the driver’s side and put in your new axle into the intermediate shaft and the driver’s side hub. Repeat the install for the balljoint and knuckle. Replace the lower splash guard. If you have a flywheel cover plate bolt that on as well, but its not necessary. Replace the battery tray and the battery and reattach the positive terminals and the negative terminals. Reconnect all the connectors near the distributor in that plastic clipped box. There sIf needed, your obd2 to obd1 conversion should have had you rewire the distributor and you will need to check your timing. Refer to helms. Have your friend stomp on the brakes again while you torque down the axle nuts. Replace the wheels and torque them down. If you have one, replace your cluster with the 5spd one. You can go ahead and jack up the car and remove the jackstands.

CLUTCH LINE BLEEDING
You will need preferably two people to do this. Three is better. One person will be inside the car pumping the clutch pedal. Another will be at the slave cylinder alternately closing and opening the bleeder valve to let air out until the line is fully bled. Preferably you should have another person watching the master cylinder reservoir so that it doesn’t bleed dry or you’ll end up with more air. This person should keep refilling the reservoir until the bleed is fully done.

TRANNY FLUID
I used GM synchromesh just cause I didn’t know the condition of the tranny for sure but I wanted to avoid grinds. Some people have told me that its actually better to use Honda MTF if the tranny is working fine since the synchromesh is a little thicker. Pennzoil synchromesh is also the same as GM synchromesh but quite a bit cheaper and can be found at AutoZone. You only need roughly 2 quarts to fill the 5spd tranny. Make sure the drain bolt is tight and undo the fill bolt. You will need a pump to pump the fluid in from the quarts into the tranny. Preferably you should have the tranny level if at all possible (lower the jack sometimes) and only pump and fill the tranny until fluid spills out from the fill hole. Replace the bolt. At this time you can also check your engine oil and it should have minimal change if any.

STARTING
Start up your car and leave it to idle for about 15 minutes while the ecu relearns itself. At first the idle may be rough, but it should smooth out after a couple minutes. If not, then you need to recheck all your vacuum lines. If it sputters and runs pig rich, you either did the distributor wiring wrong, didn’t use the right ecu (obd2/obd1, vtec/nonvtec) and you can possibly troubleshoot by using your auto ecu. It will throw a CEL, but that’s because its trying to find the TCU but cant. I’ve driven for nearly a month and just purchased a obd2 ecu for myself and the only possible disadvantages is maybe inefficiency of gas and the CEL. I’ll soon find out. To adjust the release point of your clutch pedal or the height and depth of your brake pedal, undo the nut behind the U-bracket on the respective plunger, and spin the plunger rod counterclockwise or clockwise. If it brings the pedal closer to the firewall you’ll have less travel, and a closer release point. The opposite happens when the pedal moves farther. Adjust accordingly to preference.
hould be roughly 3 connectors left unplugged.

UPDATED BY CP[MIKE] TO REFLECT CB7-SPECIFICS (this guide was written with 5th gen accords in mind)

Websites that may help you:
http://www.cb7tuner.com/vbb/showthre...=&threadid=588
http://www.cb7tuner.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=8873
http://www.cb7tuner.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=5423
www.hondaautomotiveparts.com
http://www.honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=1117145&page=1
www.accordinglydone.com/forum
board.hondasociety.com
www.bonacoinc.com
www.torringtonhondaparts.com
www.d-a-p.com

MUCH thanks to the following people for sharing pics, advice, and general consultation.
Sedracer (h-s)
Raceaccordingly (h-s, h-t)
Eddiebx (h-s)
Phat4drVtec (h-t)
THEROPE (h-t, a-d)
Accord_kid (h-t)
Sinister2c (h-t)
Schmuckingham (a-d)
Disclaimer: Please do not blame me or anyone of these individuals for misstatements or human error. You carry out your work as you see fit and are responsible for your own actions.

[GhostAccord]

Are you s.cali alan from Honda Tech?

You realize that it would have been easier just to post a link to your 2005 DIY 5spd swap thread from HT than copy and past it eh!

How to: Auto to 5spd Swap **lots of pics**, originaly psoted by s.cali alan on 05-06-2005

[GhostAccord]

You forgot to post this from the bottom of that thread.

Websites that may help you:
http://www.hondaautomotiveparts.com
http://www.honda-tech.com/zero...age=1
http://www.accordinglydone.com/forum
board.hondasociety.com
http://www.bonacoinc.com
http://www.torringtonhondaparts.com
http://www.d-a-p.com

MUCH thanks to the following people for sharing pics, advice, and general consultation.
Sedracer (h-s)
Raceaccordingly (h-s, h-t)
Eddiebx (h-s)
Phat4drVtec (h-t)
THEROPE (h-t, a-d)
Accord_kid (h-t)
Sinister2c (h-t)
Schmuckingham (a-d)
Disclaimer: Please do not blame me or anyone of these individuals for misstatements or human error. You carry out your work as you see fit and are responsible for your own actions.

ALSO PLEASE DO NOT COPY AND PASTE THIS TO OTHER FORUMS WITHOUT PERMISSION. THIS IS A COLLECTIVE EFFORT BY THOSE LISTED ABOVE AND A PERSONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT TO FINISH THIS WRITEUP.

[ChampCoupe]

i figured we needed this posted on our forum, so people wont have to search another forum for this info. s.cali alan gets his props for putting it together. i am not claiming i made this. just posting it up for cb7 owners to see. and there are differences between the cb and cd chassis i left out.

[crazymikey]

Great write up. Will be very useful when I do my swap. Thanks for posting this

[xkjnboix]

holy shit very nice write up. this will be archived forever on cb7tuner haha. props!!

[cp[mike]]

updated to reflect some CB7 specifics, and removed the CD5-only info.

[92smokeaccord]

i want to add that u deffently need a 5 speed ecu or else the car will not idol right it will bounce from 3k to 1500k rpms and never settle...me and jabercb7 just went threw tis and has been doing this for a while and then i swaped him with a 5 speed ecu and it ran like a champ...reason be this is because the auto ecu has a acuater valve that controls the idol to not burn out the touqre converter...now that theres no actuater control valve the ecu tries to fix the idol but cant so it will just rev and rev...with the 5 speed ecu theres no actuater control valve so no rev issiue unless u have a bad iacv or fast idol valve..thank u and have a nice day..

[TracieS]

So I did the wiring like it spose to be and still cant remove my key with the battery hooked up. Any ideas?

[Darkcloud]

Are you using the bypass switch on the clutch pedal