Is a Manual Transmission Swap WORTH IT? Audi S4 Swap

in this video we're going to take this 2010 Audi with a worn out automatic transmission and manual swapping what parts do we need how long does it take how much does it cost how do we code the car and why even bother not only are we gonna do this swap we're going to answer all those questions as well our swap is going to start at lifetime Audi parts this is a local Audi scrap yard where we're going to get the transmission and a few other things that I know we're going to need for the swap it's out and on the bench so what's going to happen next is Brandon's going to break all this stuff down separate the engine from the transmission while he does that I'm going to jump over here to the car pull the clutch line I think we got everything everything getable so now we get to go have some fun and see if we can actually make the car think it has a manual now I already did the full vehicle scan to be sure that we capture any coding and adaptations that are currently in the car this is the clutch pedal switch and it's the most in-depth electrical piece of this job and I went through the wiring diagram and flagged what connections are and where they go we'll need to make the rest of the harness for this and also for the reverse position switch a lot of this Hardware that I'm going to be taking out is technically one one time use I'm going to roll the dice a little bit and reuse a bunch of it because this Hardware is actually really expensive I'm pretty confident I'm not done spending money yet so we'll tally that up at the end so there's a lot that needs to happen for this swap I'm going to start under the hood get rid of this cowl and this front piece right here I already disconnected the battery so we don't have to worry about that [Music] gosh that frees up so much room a lot of leaf debris in here Chuck we're also going to be dealing with the brake booster on this side as well now we got to get this belly pans off there's actually a third piece that goes right there that I don't have installed I left it off after the PCV valve failed 700 different Hardwares now with the wheels off in the car up in the air let's go ahead and take the exhaust off luckily for me this has all been off pretty recently so hopefully we don't run into any broken bolt Sadness by the way if you don't have one of these exhaust hanger remover thingies you need to get one because they're fantastic this is where having a friend would come in handy free and loose that's not even on there Chuck well that did something this is a fumble mechanic here I guess that worked can I do this a less stupid way yay hardest part of the whole job just kidding with the exhaust off I figured I'd go ahead and lower the car down and get the top side transmission bolt got our cardboard here to keep our bolts organized this is where we get to sit up here and try and reach these bolts I should have got my electric ratchet but I didn't if you've never seen this cardboard trick draw the bell housing out should have went in smoother you can put your bolts in like that keep them organized you know some people don't need to do I always like to take every opportunity I can to stay as organized as I can all right we might have to come back we might have to come back under here we'll see we'll see what happens next we're going to take the axles out and there's a shield that sits right on top of the axle that's kind of a pain in the butt probably the worst part of the whole job when Paul and I did the clutch packs now according to the parts catalog the axles are actually the same on automatic and on manuals so I did not get new front axles hopefully that pays off now I'm only unbolting the axles I'm gonna leave them in the car rather than just completely taking them all the way out we'll have plenty of room to work around it next up we're going to get this brace off there's a 10 millimeter nut that holds a power steering line on over on the driver's side foreign I also loosened these shields well here's our axle Shield get our prop shaft unbolted from the transmission there we go loose shaft will unbolt the back side too now we gotta unbolt our carrier bearing which is behind this Shield right here which should come off like this all the dirt you can see our carrier bearing this is it right here this is another good thing to consider upgrading while you're here two go ahead and put these right back in so we don't lose them now it is a good time to go ahead and drain some fluid probably went through 500 worth of fluid in this car over the uh number of repairs that have happened to it uh I'm a little sad we've spent so much time with this DSG nursing it back to health or well nursing it not really it's never really healthy I don't guess something I haven't really considered until just right now is what I'm gonna do with the cooler lines good she good she goo we're gonna let this drain considerably I don't want to make them well I say I don't want to make a mess I want to make as little mess as possible that's probably about all I'm gonna get or at least all I have the patience for we could spend a month here waiting for fluid to drain out put the fill plug in and the drain plug next I'm going to undo the starter now one of the bolts I took out up top goes from the trans to the engine side that's a starter bolt and then there's another 16 millimeter at the front on the passenger side near the oil pan next I'm going to take this bracket off and that's going to give us some access to things like where the cooler lines are mounted up because we need to get those off probably would be a good idea to replace this Mount that I jankly filled with um windshield sealant I guess what is the right word we've got our cooler this stuff still have a couple of more transmission bolts holding on to the engine I'm going to wait till the very end like I'm gonna get them all out but one then we'll get the last one out once we have the trans jack underneath here I got the stupidest tool on the planet to do this with too by the way oh no active drippage I don't know why I didn't do this earlier these little orange foamy earplug things you shove them in there just make sure you take them back out that way you don't leak all over here I have been getting dripped on like a dum-dum and that's one of my hacks I love this hack and I didn't even think about it okay on to the next thing now I'm gonna take off the steering shaft I'm gonna go ahead and undo the lines here oh juicy and the shaft these are usually indexed so you only you don't have to worry about them like going in the wrong way or anything like everything put her bolt back in we got two bolts on the driver's side that we need to get out out there's this one and then just below you can kind of see it here is the other one we are on the home stretch here my friends we got some bolts we got to take out from back behind here from the flywheel super hard to see definitely an inconvenience those are the guys we got to get out and we have to rotate the engine around in order to access all of them should probably take that bolt out right there I think I'd give myself some more room is it the same size and everything it sure is oh look it look at all that space I have now to loosen this tiny little bolt look at how small this bolt is you're gonna love this here we go look at how short that is a little booper guy counter holding the crankshaft with the special crankshaft holding tool so for context this is similar to like unbolting the torque converter on an automatic transmission it's not exactly that but that's kind of how to think about it and this my friends is the final one Boop it's time we hit our stage two now we can go super fast I feel like I'm gonna need some wood I am also going to strap down this transmission it's a big boy get rid of this pole Jack here at the back this is where the moment of truth comes in we got two more bolts we got this little connector on here too and then we'll find the one bolt that I thought I got that I forgot that's usually what happens what I can tell you is this is the longest bolt on the planet it's the longest bolt ever made in the history of bolts holy uh okay oh uh oh there's nothing like a big transmission slipping on the jack to get your heart pumping I'm feeling pretty lucky that it didn't actually fall there we go that felt good I can actually come down I just begging to get ripped out Victory we did it now we got to get this big old Bertha transmission onto this table so we can get it out of here and then uh yeah then we're gonna deal with the other one it's you oh geez the handle slipped right off now we can get that even closer let's get a wood there we go there we go nothing but the finest Harbor Freight quality here let's get some of this DSG stuff out of the way our cooler lines run up front and luckily right at the oil pan and alternator there's a junction so I'm gonna take the lines out but I'm gonna leave the rest of it in forward of this Junction that way God forbid anything happens we can always go back if we have to I'm not planning for that but there's no sense in destroying this stuff if we don't have to if we can save it for another time then we should waiting for just the Splurge of fluid here blurb blurb we'll plug these up with something not quite sure what yet now now we can get these lines completely out of here which should be pretty easy hopefully a Juiced everywhere there's one oh my gosh come out of there there we go this one should come out pretty easy maybe there we go oh yeah now for this dangly harness I'm just gonna heat it up on the top and we're gonna leave it in the car we're at a good spot where I think it makes sense to move inside and get rid of get rid of that guy right here I'm a little mad at myself because I didn't move the seat all the way back before I disconnected the battery so there's that uh this is pretty much destroyed already you can see this is just coming apart so we're just going to reach in and unplug everything don't need that anymore we also need to take our AC trim up here off as well we'll get that unplugged it just came right off I don't know if you can see how much dirt is back in the inside of this but it's a lot some of that some of that was already there most of it is because I drive this car off-road ah there we go there we go we got a bunch of connectors underneath here there we go there we go that's gonna make my life a lot easier so here's all our connections I have a new one of these that we're going to be installing which is nice because my start stop button is peeling a little bit now my goal is to remove as little of this as possible but I have a feeling I'm going to have to remove more of it than I want to get this tray out of the way oh I found some change 35 cents all right well that's one way to recoup some of your expenses we're gonna be shifting like Mad Men before you know it now we gotta unbolt the whole assembly yes I should probably unplug it as well some of these plugs that I just unplugged are the things that we're going to have to sort through with our manual and write down to the floor holy moly okay Auto out time for the manual to go in I don't know where the hole is at somewhere around here hopefully I can reach it through reach through get at it this would be easier if I had a friend I got the boot cut that's what my problem was there we go now I can start one if only this swap was just that easy swap the shifter and Bam you're done so for the rest of this for now I'm just gonna leave this I decided to take the seat out because we have all that stuff unplugged it's a constant Buzz I should have done this before I for sure could have done this without taking the seat out but I think it's gonna just be overall easier oh I found another quarter this next part is probably going to be my least favorite part of this whole job and that's dealing with adding our clutch pedal I took the whole pedal cluster from Lifetime Audi so we're gonna replace all of them but working underneath the dash is usually not very fun and I'm probably gonna have to take off more than I actually want to also in order to prevent the steering wheel from moving I taped it we don't want our clock spring to get all twisted around there we go all right well that does free up quite a bit of room at least there's already a hole you can kind of see it way back here so plus note we don't have to cut the car apart this is our new pedal cluster or whatever you want to call it we have our clutch we also have a new brake pedal that we need to install this one is like twice as big as the manual brake pedal so I have two choices I can disassemble this and try and install these pieces on that bracket that should hopefully anyway be the same bracket it looks the same anyway or we can take this whole bracket out and install this one we got some more disassembly to do so let's just go ahead and do that now we'll make the decision in a minute well after a little bit more investigation I think it's probably just going to be easier to go ahead and take the whole steering column out swap the whole bracket over rather than doinking around with uh with the pedal cluster and the pins and everything we'll see if I live to regret that choice [Music] okay well why don't you want to come unplugged some of this might be a bit Overkill but if I can free up a little bit of extra room it's usually worth it put a couple more screws between friends this is gonna be awkward oh yeah I got a bunch of stuff taken care of under the dash but we have to deal with the front side of all that stuff as well this is our brake fluid reservoir which we do have a new one of these that has the clutch line on it the cylinder attached to the clutch pedal is actually underneath this box right here so let me get this guy out of here I seem to remember dealing with this part as kind of a pain in the butt on the wrecked car but we got we got some modulators we got some fuse panel but it works out good because this is the ECM and so we have to re-pin or add a couple pins to the ECM anyway there's one there's two it's held in with like plastic tabs we'll get our computer out of the way now I can actually see right into the car how fun is that minimal fun is how much fun that is these two harnesses you can see right here aren't too bad it's this one down below that I think is going to provide us a challenge I'm gonna unplug these two connectors here and that power wire down there can I reach it yes I can yay I think I can undo this whole fuse panel here top oh yeah there we go so that harness was actually just part of this whole big relay panel let me get that whole guy out of the way too now now our clutch pedal and cylinder lives sort of right here kind of this way of this opening and down just a little bit so let's get this box out of the way I vaguely remember having to tape the wiper motor off that's better you got to be careful with this stuff too if we break it like break it break it we run the risk of letting water in the car vws and Audis have enough problems with water leaks we don't need to create any extra ones I think I'm gonna go ahead and take the cowl and the wiper arms and just move them out of the way that should make getting this box out a little easier and I'll free up a bit of room down here also we're this far what's a couple more bolts I should have probably pulled the arms off too but I didn't like a dum-dum we can get this whole disaster out of the way in this bundle of connectors there's one wire that actually runs to the complete other side of under the hood and that's what's kind of holding me up so I went ahead and unclipped it and I don't think I'm going to be able to like pull it all the way through but I think that should give me enough room to at least just get this up and kind of out of the way look at that gross here's the wire you can see it buried let me see if I can unclip that one too this is not going to get this box out of the car but if it gets it out of the way enough then we can work around it annoying that it's gonna be there but that's plenty of space this is how much nasty crap builds up underneath there should be a drain under here somewhere you know what let's vacuum that out real quick it should never be a wonder why vws and Audis have so many water leaks it's because of stuff like this all these leaves and stuff get trapped and then block drains water builds up and it can actually leak like right through here or through this box so now with all that out of the way we can actually see this is where our clutch pedal is going to poke through right right here in this hole so we don't have to drill a hole or nothing there's just like a piece of foam with a seal covering that up next we're going to move under the dash and work with the pedal cluster and for that we're going to need this special tool the way this tool works is you have to come back here and hook in the brake pedal and then pull it to release the clip even with the tool this can kind of be a pain in the butt [Music] nothing like a little bit of struggling to get that out [Music] hey probably not a bad idea when you do this job to go ahead and replace those clips now we just got a couple more bolts to get out in order to get this whole bracket out of the way oh we got to unplug the gas pedal too now there's two more bolts that frankly I kind of forgot that I needed to take out and they are the bolts that hold the master cylinder and the brake booster through the firewall and bolt to the pedal cluster I can just unbolt the bolts and we can take the pedal cluster out and with any luck our pedal cluster is loose hey there we go all right here's our two assemblies side by side the brackets they're the same it has the opening for the cylinder and everything to go through so you think hey maybe I can just install the clutch pedal well the brake pedals are different sizes we have the small brake pedal on the manual and the big chunky boy on the automatic so you would also have to swap out brake pedals they're pinned in up at the top here and here the problem you're going to run into is in order to get these pins in you're not gonna have to worry about getting them out right if you're installing on this one in order to get these pins in you have to pull this pin way over here there's a bunch of modules and relays and stuff that live over on this side for the brake pedal side there is I think part of the HVAC motor system is like right here so you probably wouldn't have enough space to get this pin out either while taking this out is not the ideal fun day probably easier just to go ahead and swap the whole thing if you can grab the whole thing from another car the other piece I'm going to need to swap over is this plastic clip right here so this is where the rod for the brake booster goes through and at the end of the rod is a ball that clips into this white clip right here that tool presses these two tabs outward in order to make room to pull the pedal backwards the opposite way you would push it if you were slowing down or stopping the car and get around those two clips let's go ahead and get this plastic clip out of here we'll just undo the tabs this is that demo clip then we can just snap the new one in or I guess it's not a new one but I say we can snap it right in there we go that's the easiest part of that whole thing okay we gotta make sure our booster is in the right hole and try and land it on the 10 mil studs way oh don't drop it don't drop it don't drop it I didn't drop it so that's pretty much how it's gonna sit nice now before things get too wild and crazy I need to put this grommet in okay clusters in let's get our booster tightened back up I'm gonna wait on the fluid reservoir till pretty much the end that way we don't end up having a big old mess of brake fluid while we're working on the rest of it now that the pedals are all bolted up I think it's gonna be time to put the steering column back in now I'm only going to bolt up the column itself I'm not going to do all the rest of the stuff that goes along with it the main reason is we still got wires we got to run through up in like through this area so I don't want to put all this stuff back together just quite yet again I'm understand why my back hurts all the time [Music] look at that starting to look like a manual now comes the part where I'm pretty sure if you were in up until this point you're out and that's doing the wiring we have two things we need to wire up one is the clutch switch I had dug through a wiring diagram and lagged what these wires were all to find out I had the wrong wiring diagram we also have the switch to indicate reverse three wires this one's going to be pretty easy this one goes to j519 which is like the body control module that controls lighting if you don't care about reverse lights you don't need this one this can eat right into the garbage the clutch we do need to wire up because we need to make sure that we can start the car one wire is ground of the six wires two of them are power which I think are these two and two go to the ECM and one goes to the electronic parking brake module which I'm pretty sure is this purple wire right here this is the only one that's going to kind of be a pain in the butt because this goes all the way back to right in front of the passenger side tail light I made the reverse harness on the bench I knew the three wires would need a pretty significant amount of length one being a ground wire that will ground under the hood the other two needing to go into the cabin of the car to the j519 I did put that harness in a heat sleeve because they're going to be pretty close to the exhaust initially I didn't put pins in either one of the harnesses because I don't know what pins each module uses there are tons of different pins that each module can use so I generally like to pull the pin out of the module and compare it that way luckily I got a ton of pins left over from other jobs now that we have some basics of our harness made let's get this stuff in so this is our clutch switch right that's just a magnetic switch we don't need to add a whole lot of wires to this right for example this ground I'm going to ground right here right on this this stud right here now I need more wire but how much do I need like two inches five inches I don't exactly know I think the thing that makes the most sense to do next is to go ahead and get that e-box back installed so that we can start measuring out our harness but if I do that I'm going to cover up the cylinder here so I'm going to put the what the hose on that's going to go to the reservoir I'm thinking I might just cut this one rather than swapping that whole thing over and just plopping the line on I also believe it is time for our new clutch line I can't tell you guys how much I appreciate what I'm about to show you despite the fact that it's completely blown out on the camera they labeled which side goes where thanks USP Motorsports I appreciate that there might have sounded like there was some sarcasm in that statement but honestly there's not I really do appreciate that now this may not oh oh goodness gracious let's try that again now this may not be the final install of this box here don't break it don't break it Charles now we have a little bit better idea of what we're gonna need to do here we are going to need to add a few inches to this for this ground this whole conglomeration kind of goes in here too like that so I think if I add six inches to each one of these wires that should be enough this is our 94 pin connector and the one that I need to splice into for the ECM I have two wires that are going to go to it I'm going to d-pin one pin out of this ECM and see if I can match it up to what I already have and we're dealing with half millimeter and 0.35 millimeter wire so they're pretty small there's a little lock on this top piece we can slide that off this is our secondary lock the primary lock is what actually Clips the wire into the location so we need to take that out depending on what wire number you have will dictate what connector it goes in there are two pins that I need to add to the ECM both of them are in the 94 pin connector and we need to find number 11 and number 15. it looks like number 11 already has a pin in it so we're gonna D pin that pin add our pin to our clutch switch then all we have to do is drop a pin into number 15. important to note if you're doing this there's a bunch of different ECM options and wiring options so you always want to make sure that you are working with the correct wiring diagram for your car now with the wire for pin 11 out I was able to somehow miraculously find another one of the same pin size I think the wire diameter is a little bit bigger but this is probably 0.35 millimeters and this is half millimeter so that's totally fine I'm not going to cut this wire what I'm actually going to do is I'm just going to cap it off with some heat shrink and leave it and just tuck it back in the harness so I got the two wires in in numbers 15 and 11. we got this guy ready to get sorted I'm gonna put my secondary locks back in the wire that was in position 11 actually went to the transmission and to the convenience module I'm not going to get too crazy with this just yet just want to kind of hold it together we need to test all this stuff before putting any of it like all back together let's get some of these wires ran harness for a reverse switch needs to go through this grommet and this grommet this grommet is for the firewall and then this one is for the e-box so that'll make it a little easier when you're running wires especially through rubber grommets a little bit of soapy water will help those wires this is just a pick that I cut or not cut but uh hammered down so that it had a flat end oh nice and good man I'll tell you fishing wires when it goes well kind of enjoyable I don't have a problem grabbing the ends of these with pliers because we're gonna put connectors on it Anyway by the way if you're not using a seam ripper or cutting electrical tape on wiring harnesses y'all are missing out it is the way I'm going to thread these wires through this grommet exactly the same way as I did the other one this flattened down pick to open up the grommet and some soapy water to help the wires slide a little bit easier now our 519 module is just on the inside of here so this should be a good amount with the reverse light harness Ram now it's time to do the clutch switch harness I'm going to reach down and try and unplug it so we can pull the whole connector out I think that's going to make doing the rest of this harness quite a bit easier here's the harness what I'm going to do is I'm going to fish it through and then I'm going to add some length and then if we'll draw it back out if we need to now kind of on a whim I threw a piece of heat shrink on the end of our wires that are going Through The Grommet which is a good thing I did because I almost ran that ground through there too this should hopefully get us fished fished a little bit fishier there we go I'm not gonna lock her in I'm just gonna set it kind of in there so we got this ground ready to go this ground we're gonna have to add a length of wire which is no big deal we'll put an eyelet on this one when it comes to making harnesses adding lengths to wires I prefer the crimp connectors with the heat shrink built into them this is the way the repairs are done at the dealership this is a factory authorized repair needless to say I'm sure I have made thousands of wiring repairs this way it's a highly debated topic on whether this is better over solder frankly if you do either one of them right it's probably going to be just fine for you so whichever method you like to do do that just do a good job and it should be fine our clutch switch requires two different power sources it looks like one switched from the ECM power supply relay and another one either ignition power or straight battery power I'm gonna add one fuse into the fuse panel under the dash and another one inside the e-box while putting this one inside the e-box is not my favorite idea it's probably going to be the easiest way to do it I'm going to tap in to this big red wire that goes to the red connector and draw a power off of it to do that I'm going to use this inline fuse holder and drop a 5 amp fuse in it now that we got her soldered I'm going to slide a piece of heat shrink over this is like Marine heat shrink so there's actually a sealant inside of it this is all pretty water tight anyway so it's not a huge deal but I might as well try and do it as best as we can so now we'll have this this little fuse panel thing on underneath this is a 5 amp fuse hopefully we never have to check it what I am going to do now is set this kind of in here because we're going to need these plugged in get our ECM plugged in similar to what we had to do with the ECM I gotta do that to the electrics module which you can kind of see it back up here there are actually a bunch of connectors at the electrics module we're only dealing with one this A7 so I added one wire to pin 21 in this white connector I need to add one to pin 13. luckily too I had the pins I also have this jumble of wires that exist down here this is all like headliner type stuff sunroof and whatnot so this probably could all just get cut now you might be thinking Charles this seems like the worst part of this entire job and uh well you know I don't know I I enjoy this part it's uh you find it relaxing something about running wires calms me down something about figuring out how this comes apart calms me down I also need to supply another power source to our clutch switch this is where a factory manual car that power would come from this fuse panel and what's cool about this fuse panel is there's a bus bar so one side of all these fuses has a single power source then the wire on the other side would go to the component so rather than cutting and splicing into existing wires the car is provided the power source I'm gonna drop a pin and a fuse in this Factory fuse panel what's nice is I'm using a very different 5 amp fuse so that should stand out like a sore thumb cover back on all our wires in clip clip Factory as can be keep this on the outside I'll put this back up here then I can take my fuse panel snap that back in we're making some good progress for the parking brake module I was just gonna pop this one pin in because it should be similar to how the ecm's already done I've already showed you guys that so I didn't want to just repeat the whole thing in a different spot of the car this module is located just in front of the passenger side taillight well I got the connector out and apart and took this fuse panel right here up and out of the way and I found something interesting that I've never actually ran into before like I had done with other modules I pulled one of these pins out to confirm that I had the right size pin if you look real close you can see there's actually two different size holes on this white connector there's the ones that are just straight up square and then there's these where these three wires are here up in the top that are bigger and have that little extended part up on the top or in this case it's going to be on the bottom so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to pause on this part I might plug the module back in and just leave all this kind of hanging out here because I don't want this one pin that's not going to prevent the car to start most likely to slow our progress down well remember a second ago when I said I'm just going to leave this B and move on to something else um yeah I walked away for like 10 seconds and then just couldn't let it go so I I got the connector apart check out what I found so you see these little white nubby things right here these are actually taking place of pins because I guess I'm gonna have to cut and drill this out so it's not even like a different pin it's completely sealed and it's sealed because if you look way back where in the connector there's another seal back there that's why there's just multiple seals so I guess our next mission is to drill that out I'm probably going to triple check my wiring diagram just to make sure that 26.25 it's not pin 24 and uh instead of 1025 but it calls for pin 25 which is this one right here so much for leaving things going moving on apparently that's not how I roll okay a 760 fourth drill bit and some hand drilling later it's not the prettiest of things I had to go over a little bit on hole size no big deal luckily there's no connectors or anything next to it with any luck this will slide right into place oh yeah you know you Vic hit Victory on one of these when you hear the little click okay awesome man I'm excited about that glad we didn't give up I'm gonna put all this back together there's no need to watch that and we'll keep moving on to the next thing so now we're gonna get our what I'm calling the flex plate off with this weird clutch setup some of these things maybe don't actually exactly function as their traditional name but I think flexplate's probably the right word for this so we're going to take this off being mindful that there might be stuff like shims and things behind it that we have to deal with and in order to hold it in place we're going to use our bent valve trick that'll hold our flex plate and then we're going to impact these babies out I'm gonna leave that top one in so that when the flex plate comes off it doesn't just fall okay not too bad not too bad at all there's no shim or anything on the back side now I wasn't real keen on swapping this starter over but I checked with our man Paulie D the parts guy and it seems like there's a handful of variants and options and for starters and odds are you could probably use the same starter they don't call it out specifically by Auto and manual they call it out by vendor of the starter and the last thing I really want is to get it all together and then like the starter fail or bust a hole in the case or something ridiculously outlandish scenario that probably is impossible to happen but we'd find a way to have happen I'm gonna undo that with the hopes that the extra space will allow me to push the starter from the front to the back rather than taking the alternator out and taking the engine mount out and all that other stuff I just need to get enough oh that could have been it that could have been the trick my friends so here you go if you need to replace a starter on an Audi take the transmission out oh there we go maybe so close I'm way back here well I'm not sure this was the choice to make but it's the choice I made come on yes how about that well it worked so here's the starter I just took out for the automatic compared to the one from the car we pulled this manual trans from as you can see they are different to me it looks like the manual one is a smaller overall starter it didn't call one for manual one for DSG it called for if it has a Bosch put a Bosch in it which is what our DSG had if it has a Vallejo put a Vallejo in it which means it probably could work but this little bit of struggle is way better than any kind of struggle once the car is all back together and then we have to chase down why the heck it won't start or some other weird thing that could happen now hopefully we can just do exactly that same thing going back together with it sometimes you gotta talk nice to them sometimes Gotta Be You know a little aggressive with them this feels like one of those times where talking nice is the right choice click nice sound of Glory then we just kinda Chevy shove this guy back yes awesome awesome awesome awesome now we got to get the alternator plug back on and uh we're we're in business now because I'm doing a thing you really shouldn't do and that's reusing the bolts I'm Gonna Run them through a thread chaser to clean all that old thread Locker off then we'll put some new thread Locker on well here's our two transmission side by side the DSG is quite a bit bigger what the plan now is to get the DSG on a rolly platform like this guy is on then get this manual on the cart I can then use the cart to crank the transmission up put it on the trans jack and start our process for getting it installed the prop shafts are also different you can see the DSG one is quite a bit shorter because the DSG trans before putting the transmission in it's probably a good idea to get our flex plate on the DSG flex plate and the manual flex plate are different the manual one also looks like it has a pilot bearing inside of it I didn't account for that so we're going to be reusing it what you are looking at here is not best practice says you should do the bearing if it's available separate and you should do new flex plate bolts this is one of those things that I hope doesn't come back to bite me [Music] let's get this guy onto this guy there we go sketchy we can at least strap it down not the sketchiest thing I've ever done cranky cranky thank you [Music] well after a whole bunch of jiggling and gurgling and gerbiling and whatnot wiggling in that uh our transmission is in I feel like this is a pretty big victory moment I'm excited trying to not get too excited because we still got a long road ahead also this thing is a beast and I'm pretty sure my back is going to hurt later today but we'll worry about that later today important note here on the transmission bolts there are a couple of bolts that are different lengths from the manual to the automatic mostly the ones at the bottom are going to be longer on the manual these are also aluminum bolts so it's probably not a bad idea to go ahead and replace them anyway and if you're getting new bolts Audi can actually get you the ones for the manual instead of the DSG I think the next steps are going to be getting the shift linkage on figuring out where a reverse plug is there's going to be a ton of stuff that is just me putting things back together so I hope you enjoy this Montage of Clips sped up of me putting things back together well we are on our way to getting this thing at least to a state where I can start doing our coding one thing I want to do before that is get the brake fluid line to the clutch cylinders I snatched the reservoir off the car we swapped everything off of but I think I'm just going to try and cut this one first and then plug this line on it's the same Reservoir just this is not there a clutch uses brake fluid to actuate the cylinders so we're gonna see we can just cut it we'll get a little bit of brake fluid leakage for sure I'm gonna try and not make a huge mess oh yeah there's that that's a lot of fluid oh it's more than I expected it's just globaling out of there oh get in there get in there okay somewhat on there while I'm here I'm just gonna go ahead and bleed the clutch probably wouldn't hurt to do a brake fluid service on this thing too I'm very ah I'm very confident I've never done that so I got pressure on the reservoir now we gotta find where we're at here we go look at that bougie close it up that was a big old swath of air that came out we'll feel the clutch pedal and see how it is and then determine if we need to re-bleed it okay so I think we got what I need to have connected to the car in order to do the next part which is coding and the way I'm going to do the coding is I'm gonna punch through it figure it out and then I'll come back and talk about what all I had to change otherwise you guys are going to get mega board you're gonna click away and go watch Pitch meetings or something like that that's not going to be good for me but then I sat down and realized I got to put some of this stuff back together still uh before I can do any coding like the cluster and the start button so I'm going to do that now and do the coating and then we'll talk about what all I had to change oh shush you shush well she starts and works and after a handful of modules that we coded including the ECM the Gateway which we told it hey you don't have an automatic transmission anymore the electrics module uh the parking brake module maybe the convenience module it really wasn't that bad even running the screenshot it took me about 30 minutes to code the car and also Big Ups to Matt who's done this swap for just letting me confirm my coding against his I have a bunch of warnings in the dash but I had those before we even started so we're in pretty good shape I think now it is time to do our final assembly but I won't make you watch that because I know you're ready you want to hear this thing fire up and see it drive drive it next on my pre-test Drive punch list I got to get the transmission fluid level set I don't remember if we drained it at lifetime Audi or not so I'm gonna check it and top it off as needed filling up this manual is very similar to all other VW and Audi manual transmissions we take the fill plug out that's where the level is checked then I'm just just going to pump fluid in until it comes out this hole after doing a proper test drive and shake down on the car I'm going to come back and service all the fluid so right now I'm only worried about the level being correct well next up it is time to get that exhaust back on and I'm I'm guessing this is going to be hilarious for you guys to watch [Music] [Music] we have to get our axles bolted up I am using a little bit of blue thread Locker on these bolts foreign I think our last piece down here at the bottom is going to be this guy normally the belly pan that that Shield the street Shield or whatever it's called Uh lives right around here too not sure I'm gonna put that on just yet I want to make sure I can bring it back in easily and check it for leaks but you really need to have this bolted up apparently it can cause like sagging or some kind of other sad Sad Panda thing happening so I think I need to find those front two bolts I am still missing that one bolt for the transmission the the center bottom one so like six o'clock position I got that on order from Audi but that's not going to hold us up from shaking this car down on a test drive I think now it's time lower it down a little bit put the wheels on clean up up top power steering fluid got to plug the seat in to move the seat so you can move the seat to bolt the seat in now there's still a handful of things under the hood that I'm gonna have to address like our DSG cabling and I gotta put all this stuff back together okay I'm at the point where I can wait no longer I think we're going to test it up in the air first here we go wiggle wiggle wiggle clutch in start button okay it starts that's good Moment of Truth first gear clutch in clutch out hey hey we have four wheels rolling oh yeah well starts it moves I'm feeling real good about that let's get it down get all the crud lights and everything off take it on a drive whoa God [Music] foreign well we have shifting we have acceleration we have deceleration other than being super loud this is awesome I mean clearly it works I would tell you that I have no warning lights on in the dash however that's not the case we have a billion warning lights on in the dash because this car as you can tell is in fact race car pedal feels good the clutch feels good all the shift mechanism stuff feels good [Music] all right so awesome initial Shakedown the car feels great let's swing back to the shop and talk about what we still have left to do [Music] well we did it we took our B8 S4 from a DSG to a manual transmission let's answer those burning questions that I know you have first up how much did all of this cost from a part standpoint you can probably expect about 3 500 the transmission alone gonna run you about 2500 and then all the extra parts that I went ahead and replaced too now some of the things that I replace you don't need to do such as the steering wheel which I haven't actually done that yet here's a brief rundown of the parts you're definitely going to need the transmission the prop shaft the clutch pedal the brake pedal the shifter assembly a clutch line the flex plate bolted to the engine other than that you could probably get away with making do with what the car already has you'll also need some odds and ends bolts some fluids some coolant some power steering fluid if you have the Hydro power steering and of course your mileage may vary on what else you might need but I would plan for no less than thirty five hundred dollars just to do the factory Parts as far as how long this swap actually took I spent about five days on this but a lot of that time was also spent filming if you have all the parts on all the tools you could probably knock it out in a couple of days now that's just the basics you can spend all the money you want to spend you can replace a bunch of the parts you can do the really smart things that I didn't do which was kind of dumb that I didn't do them which brings me to the three things that I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have regrets about after doing this job one not doing anything with the timing it was right there really should have done at least the upper stuff resealed those upper covers doing the preventative because this thing has 215 something thousand miles on it and who knows if anything's ever been done to it number two not doing the clutch dum dum dum on my part especially because my S4 is tuned doing the clutch while you have the transmission out makes all the sense now it's a little different for me because I can just take trans out swap new clutch in it it's really not that big of a deal but if you are paying for this kind of thing one this is really going to be expensive for you because it's going to be a lot of labor and two it overlaps 100 basically I think three more bolts and I could have had the clutch out do a clutch it's a better choice and finally the the regret that I think I'm gonna have is doing this in the first place is having a manual transmission even better in this car I gotta tell you I don't know it's got a fun factor for sure but is it gonna make the car overall better only time will tell some of that might depend on how long the clutch lasts or whether the engine blows up or not there's still a few loose ends in this swap that I need to tie up I still have to put the belly pan back on I need to swap the steering wheel and I need to get fittings to block off those cooler lines I have them capped off so it's not going to leak but it would be nice to get proper plugs I'll probably just have those made locally another question you probably have is how hard was this to do it really wasn't that bad I would say the hardest thing really is lugging those transmissions in and out of the car the coding part was not very hard working through the wiring diagram to figure out what exactly I needed to add it wasn't really that bad either now I have some experience doing that so if wiring is something that you're a little uneasy of that part can definitely be intimidating well we did what we set out to do we went from Flappy paddles to a Shifty boy on a B8 S4 and congratulations I did nothing unique and basically put together a car that completely already exists I had a good time hope you guys enjoyed following along with that I'm out have an awesome day and I'll talk to you again next time that was all six gears by the way

Channel: HumbleMechanic

Views: 270,910

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Id: 5xH7XG42uTE

Length: 49min 34sec (2974 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 14 2022