HondaCivicForum.com - Automatic to Manual Transmission Conversion

Special thanks to 93delsolsi from www.hondaswap.com for this one.

Auto to Manual Conversion for Civics 92-95
These FAQ should be identical for 96-98 Honda Civic EX. Obtain the following parts: Manual Transmission Clutch Pressure Plate Flywheel Clutch Hydraulic System Composed of these parts: Slave Cylinder Hydraulic Lines Clutch Master Cylinder Hydraulic Reservoir Clutch Pedal Clutch Pedal Sensors AND plugs Brake and Gas Pedal Manual Transmission ECU Shift Linkage Shift Boot Shift Knob Upper Transmission Mount Front Transmission Stabilizer.
Attachment 38983

Exterior:

Remove and replace automatic transmission with manual unit. Interior: You must remove the armrest/center console and shift boot trim panels to gain access to the shifter and related parts. You will see that the shifter cable runs through the floorboard to the transmission. Remove the cable. Take an air-chisel and remove the welds that hold cable guide bracket that you just removed. You need to remove this to allow access for the manual transmission shifter linkage to work properly. To fill in this huge hole, use a piece of sheet metal, and trim it to fit. Attach it with self-tapping sheet metal screws.
Attachment 38984 Attachment 38984

On the shifter for the auto transmission, you will see a 14-wire plug. Cut the plug from the auto shifter assembly, and leave about 5 inches of wire. Looking at the plug, the positions are (left to right) (top row) 14,13,12,11,10,9,8 and (bottom row) 7,6,5,4,3,2,1.
Attachment 38986

Starter (top) Sensor:

There are two heavy gauge wires (position #11 and position #12). Connect these two wires to the top sensor (clutch interlock switch) on the clutch pedal assembly. This will only allow the car to start when the clutch pedal is engaged. In other words, every time you press the clutch you will close the circuit.

Cruise Control (bottom) Sensor:

The bottom switch is your cruise control disable switch. Run two wires from the switch: connect one to the position #7 (black) and the other to #13 (pink). Every time you press the clutch pedal, the cruise control will disable. Removing the Key: On the 14-wire plug, there is a black wire you will need to connect to a green wire with a white stripe. This puts the car in "park" so you can take the key out at any time. Reverse Lights: Look at the plug you used on the engine wiring harness to hook up to your reverse sensor on the manual transmission. Run two wires from this switch to the yellow wire and a green wire with black stripe (positions 4 and 5) at the big plug that you cut off from the auto shifter. Now your reverse lights should work. I have heard that if you replace your automatic ECU with a manual one, your reverse lights will work without extra wiring. This has yet to be proven or not (I am still using the auto ECU until next week).

Price: around $1500

AGAIN, thanks for delsolsi from hondaswap for the borrowed writeup.

For those of you with OBD-I PCM's, you can convert your automatic PCM to a manual unit; OBD-0 and OBD-II will have to swap out for the actual manual unit.
For the people with an OBD-I PCM, this is all you need to do:
https://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i...totomanual.gif

If you don't have good soldering skills, I'd recommend buying the manual PCM since poor soldering can potentially ruin the PCM.

Thanks to trustdestruction for information about converting the PCM