5-speed swap woes

Every 8G Galant owner, hell probably even most 7G Galant owners at least once contemplated to swap to a 5-speed transmission. There are many benefits that come with swapping the auto slush box to a manual transmission from the 3G Mitsubishi Eclipse. For example, a manual will put more power to the ground than the stock automatic, the whole car feels more responsive, the power is controlled by the driver and not a programmed computer, and depending on how it’s driven, you get more miles to the gallon which in turn will give you more smiles to the gallon! To any car enthusiast, that sounds like an awesome package! But all of this does not come easy.

I started collecting parts for my 5-speed swap in the Summer of 2008. I sold my 17” Rota Battles for two-hundred fifty dollars and bought a flywheel and clutch from a FWD Turbo 2G. Through out the summer, fall, winter, and spring seasons going into 2009, I ended up having collected almost 90% of the swap only missing the trans and some miscellaneous parts. I had a stack of parts in my basement waiting to get installed onto a car and change the car for the rest of its life. I planned to get the swap done before Back To Normal.

Now, someone might think, “Alright, easy find a trans and buy the rest of the small parts”. Wrong. One thing I forgot to mention is that I was on a strict budget of less than a thousand dollars. By the time I got 90% of the swap parts collected, I was at around four hundred dollars. So I was desperately looking for a transmission for less than three-hundred dollars. I searched for parts everywhere and found one 2 hours away from my house for three hundred dollars even. On the day I planned on taking the trek down and pick it up, my grandmother died and I lent the money for the trans to my family for funeral costs in the Philippines. So I postponed the swap and went to Back 2 Normal automatic.

Throughout the rest of the summer I kept the 5-speed in the back of my head and behind everything else. I did some body work to the car and just drove the heck out of it. I put all my 5-speed parts collected into storage, sold the lightened 2G flywheel, and enjoyed my summer. At about the end of summer, a buddy and I took a road trip down to Indiana to a pick-n-pull to go treasure hunting. Unfortunately, after visiting two pick-n-pulls, there wasn’t a single 3G Eclipse or 2G Stratus in both yards. I was once again discouraged to complete the five-speed swap.

I was sitting on the couch doing the usual browsing on my car forums and Craigslist when I stumbled upon a 2002 Mitsubishi Eclipse GS transmission for sale for two hundred dollars. The ad said it may need some work but I called the number listed anyway. After speaking to the seller for a few minutes she said that the Input shaft bearing might be bad because the trans was making a bit of a racket. I searched and searched on Club3G and The Galant Center. After HOURS of searching and reading posts, I found out that the Input shaft bearing making noise is a common problem on 3G transmissions. It wasn’t a serious issue as it doesn’t affect how the trans operates but was a bit annoying driving down the road. On that week’s Friday a buddy and I went down fifteen miles from me and inspected the trans. The shaft had no play to be worried about and it went through all the gears perfectly. I talked the price down to one hundred sixty dollars and took it home.

At this point, I was about 95% complete. I had the trans, pedals, master/slave, clutch, shifter, shifter cables, and lines/fittings. All I needed were a 3g flywheel, trans mount, flywheel washers, and the clutch fluid reservoir. I started to take the car apart while waiting for the flywheel. I got the car pretty much disassembled by the time the flywheel came. All I needed to do was drop the auto and remove the cables.

The cables, by far, was one of the biggest battles of the whole journey. I spent two days of on and off work to get the cables out to finally get them out of the car. Getting the manual cables in was just as much of a pain as removing the auto one. Once I got the cables in, I ran into another problem, with the flywheel.

Since I got a remanufactured AFTERMARKET 3G flywheel, the stock flex plate bolts did NOT work. I tried many types of bolts. I went to NAPA and got some bolts of the same size and thread pitch (m12x1.25) but a few millimeters longer than the flex plate bolts. I went to two Napa’s and went through two different length bolts. Just to find out I needed hardened steel bolts from the dealer. So I went to my local shop and called a few dealerships. I ended up ordering them from ExtremePSI.com. The aftermarket flywheels call for the 2G FWD Turbo flywheel bolts.

So as soon as I got the bolts, I proceeded to put the flywheel and clutch on. With the aftermarket flywheel I used I ended up throwing out the two flywheel washers completely and not use them. I put some thread locker on the bolts and torqued the flywheel down. Next comes the moment of truth and quite possibly the MOST difficult thing to do during the swap if you are doing it by yourself and on the floor.

Thanksgiving went past and the Friday after, I decided I was going to raise the trans onto the motor. I shimmed the clutch fork pivot ball and proceeded to install the transmission. Two things to remember while lifting up the transmission, remove the studs for the mount because it WILL hit the frame rail and mount the rear roller mount onto the mount separate from the transmission. Remembering these things will make it a lot easier to slide the transmission up onto the motor. It took me all day Friday to get the transmission in just to remove it again on Monday.

When I shimmed the fork, I shimmed the ball with 4 washers that spaced the fork about ¼” closer to the slave cylinder. Well, this was too much shim and the fork was all up against the clutch pressure plate. It took me around an hour and a half to remove the trans and about 30 seconds to re-shim the ball. It took another couple of hours to get the trans back on the motor with help from a buddy. I tightened all the bell housing bolts down and reinstalled all of the suspension parts and put the car on the ground. All I needed to do was bleed the clutch and adjust the pedal.
I didn’t get to bleed the clutch until about a week after the car was put together on her own feet. I had to wait for a reservoir and once I got the reservoir I sprung a bunch of leaks from the slave and the fittings. At first the Banjo fitting on the slave was leaking and pulling air into the system because both crush washers were on the same end and wasn’t sealing between the fitting and the slave. Once I fixed that problem another leak sprung from the fitting adapters. Teflon tape fixed that issue and I was on my way to bleeding the clutch with a buddy.

I bought a one-man bleeding kit but it wasn’t really working. The instructions said, keep the bleeder open and pump the pedal until there is no air in the system filling the reservoir with fluid along the way. It was taking such a long time to bleed that I broke down and did it the old fashioned way. I had my brother pump the pedal three to four times and hold it while I cracked the bleeder open. Once we got this procedure down, it only took about fifteen to twenty minutes to completely bleed the clutch. There was no air evident in the system but the slave wasn’t pushing the fork enough to disengage the clutch.

I was stumped as to what the issue could be, I was afraid that the slave might be leaking from the inside so I pulled the boot off and it was dry. So the slave wasn’t leaking. The master I know for sure wasn’t leaking because, well, there was fluid in the slave. This is where it struck me, I had to adjust the pedal. The FSM calls for adjusting the pedal height seven inches from the floor, so I did and it disengaged as soon as it hit the floor. So I put it in gear and drove her down the block. After a few minutes of driving I HATED that it engaged right on the floor. So once again I was adjusting the pedal. I turned the rod twice and voila! It had good clutch pressure and it engaged where I wanted it to engage. I finally got the car completed. I put everything back on, like the hood and I put the seats and the rest of the interior back together.

By the time I finished it, it had snowed so I was reluctant to drive it with all the salt on the roads. I ended up driving her to a local hotdog joint a few days later and OH MY GOD it felt so good. The clutch grabbed awesome, not too aggressive but it still felt like a performance clutch, the gear shifted smoothly and besides the trans being noisy, Baby G sounded happy. I was finally 5-speed. All the work and frustration were worth it and I have fallen in love with my car all over again. On the way home, I gave her a little pull in third gear and she felt like such a different car. The power was right under my foot, under my control.

The Galant is currently in my garage chillin’ for the winter. I wont be able to break her in ‘til the spring. But everyday knowing she’s waiting for me to drive her puts a smile on my face. It wasn’t an easy task, there were points in my parts collecting where I just wanted to sell all my shit and quit. But I kept on truckin’ and I got it done eventually. The 5-speed swap is by far the best modification I have done on the Galant and I have a lot of people to thank. People like Stewi, 4G63mightymax, Seth, Ivory8G, SPD_FRK, and qnzmostwanted to name a few. Now that I look back, I wouldn’t have it any other way. The next 8G I get will be five-speed swapped and all other cars I buy in the future will be manual. In the end, I’m happier, my car is happier, and I can move on to more upgrades to make this car one of the many great Galants in our community. As I attend Uti in the spring until fall of 2011, I will enjoy the feel of my newly five-speed swapped Galant and drive her the way she is intended to be driven. Next up, a few key suspension upgrades and BOOST. =)