mjshealy

Hello all, i have a few questions for any Master Honda Tech's out there. I have a 92 civic lx 1.5l sohc, automatic tranny. I almost have all the parts i need to do a 5 spd. conversion. I understand that i will have to tap into the tranny harness and reroute the wiring, but i have a few more questions:
1. CV AXLES: when i went to Advance Auto, they said they only list 1 CV Axle for my car, and that the Automatic and Manual trannys use the same CV Axles....is this correct?

2. Starter: I have been to various sites now and heard different things from everyone, will the automatic starter work on the manual tranny?

3. ECU- I've also heard that i will have to switch out my ECU to a 5 speed one....is this necessary or will the engine & tranny work with my current ECU?

These are the only things i have heard have to be changed, other than the motor mount for the tranny. I'm seriously going to go through with this swap, i just need to know what all will HAVE to be changed in order to complete my swap. I need to know what parts listed above WILL work with a 5 speed, i will have 3 days off of work to do the swap in, which is plenty, unless i have these drawbacks, so PLEASE post something ONLY if you know it to be 100% correct...Yes i'm talking about those of you who have done this conversion before. Thank you all for your time, and i look forward to hearing some good answers.

Fabrik8

The ECU will work fine, it just needs to be slightly modified. There are two jumpers that need to be changed inside the ECU which set the program parameters to use. Once the jumpers are changed it will be a manual trans ECU.

Anyone who can chip a Honda ECU can do that mods for you for very cheap. It doesn't need to be chipped, but people who chip are already familiar with that modification. I used to charge $10 for that back in the day when I had time for stuff like that, the mods are actually faster than taking the front/back covers off of the ECU.

loweg4dr

if you keep the auto ecu it will just throw a check engine light but it will run just fine

Fabrik8

Or, you could do it the right way (which is really cheap) and it won't throw a CEL or try to turn on the tranny lockup solenoids which won't be there. When the right way and the rigged way differ by about $10, is it really that tough of a decision?

83Stang5.0

Axles are the same, I'm not sure about the starter.

mjshealy

In your opinion, what would be the right way?

I do not mean to offend you, but do you know this from experience?

Thanks guys, this is exactly how i wanted this thread started, we could help alot of people who want to do this swap by having this thread open, clean, and informative.

Fabrik8

Changing the two jumpers inside. See above post. The two jumpers tell the ECU to use the manual tranny parts of its program instead of the auto tranny parts of its program. The manual and auto ECUs are the exact same ECU, but the manual ECU has blank spots on it's circuit board where the auto tranny parts go. Switch the jumpers on an auto ECU and you get a manual ECU. It's a good trick too; I used to get the auto ECUs for dirt cheap, change the jumpers, and resell them for more money as manual ECUs.