05 V6 Auto To Manual Transmission Swap

Mark norwood said:

Hello all. I just joined the forum and am a 05 v6 owner. I've owned the car for 11 years and will need to change out the motor. While the motor is bring swapped I want to change it to a manual transmission. I'm looking for some guidance on this project. I'm in Southern California. I will not be doing this job myself. I need to hire a mechanic.

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You are honestly looking at more money than the car is worth if you're farming the work out to a shop on a swap like this.

Unfortunately, the good ol' days of being able to slap a boneyard trans, pedals, and a new clutch and flywheel into a Mustang, rig up a couple wires, and go for a drive pretty much died in 1996.

Here's a very rough estimate of what you'd be looking at in parts alone IF you did it yourself (any shop or dealership is going to mark parts up a minimum of 25-30%, and likely more, and then charge at least $100 per hour labor on it, and since it's a custom job, that will be clock time instead of flat-rate in most cases.

Parts:
$400-1000+ for a used or reman T5.
$100-150 for a used pedal set
$200-350 for a used wiring harness (engine and trans harness are integrated on these cars)
$150-200 for a used driveshaft (the manual and automatic 4.0 cars use different shafts)
$125 for a used stock shifter
$204 for a new clutch set (Rock Auto)
$120 for a new flywheel (Rock Auto)
$58 for a clutch master cylinder (Rock Auto)
This list isn't even all-inclusive, it's going off what I was able to find via car-part.com, rockauto.com and the one online article I could find on a S197-generation Mustang with an automatic-to-5spd swap. On top of the parts, I'd guesstimate the labor at roughly 10 hours on the transmission swap alone, and that could be lowballing it. That puts the transmission swap costs alone at $2250-2400 (with no parts markup, and 10 hours labor at $100/hour), and that's not including a trip on a tow truck to a tuner, nor what a tuner would charge you to re-flash the PCM for a manual transmission. Throw in that you're saying you also need an engine, which will have it's own parts, labor, fluids, and miscelaneous, and you're easily in the $5000+ range at the LOW end of the spectrum for the work you're wanting to have done, and all of this on a car that optimistically blue-books at $4000-5000 trade-in, and swapping to a manual transmission is going to destroy that value. On top of ALL of that, you're in California, good luck getting it to pass smog.

Not trying to be mean about it, just trying to get all the facts out there for you. I turn wrenches for a living at a big dealership that sells and services multiple brands (including Ford), and before that worked a parts counter for them (And before that turned wrenches for or did parts for several other dealerships, a performance shop, and a tire shop over the years), so I know a little bit about what you're trying to do here, and why it's not really a great idea.

If you REALLY want a manual transmission car, and the car still runs and drives now, you'll be better off either selling it outright, and using that money towards a car that already has a manual transmission, or trading it in on one that already has a manual transmission. If it doesn't still run and drive, find a mom-and-pop shop that has a good reputation around town, and tell them you want them to put a good used engine in it if you're wanting to get rid of it for a manual trans car, and then sell it or trade it in, or decide to keep the car and get a good quality remanufactured engine (such as one from Jasper) installed and enjoy the car with it's automatic until you're ready to get rid of it in favor of that manual transmission car you want.