gqdabien

Hello all, has anyone followed these instructions successfully to do the transmission swap from Auto to Manual?

https://clubsciontc.com/forums/diy-i...awaited-50242/

I am thinking of performing this in the near future, wondering if there's any additional caveats I should take into consideration not outlined by this thread.

I've replaced axles, and the supercharger on the tC before but never had experience supporting the engine and dropping the subframe, let alone the transmission.
Also not sure how the car will run if I just drop in a manual ECU with no TRD S/C reflash, and I have an S/C on it or just leave the current reflashed auto ECU in there.

I'll be doing this in my garage and have other cars to drive, so I don't mind taking my time with this.

Thanks all!

bbsciontc

I haven't done this in a tC, but I was in a similar predicament with an old Nissan I had that was swapped to a manual. It was originally automatic with a tuned ECU for an aftermarket turbo kit and 8 psi. When going to manual, I decided to keep the auto ECU. Switching to an untuned manual ECU would be problematic by itself since the injectors were larger, and the N/A tune would have far to aggressive ignition timing under boost.

Keeping the auto ECU did cause me to run a CEL due to multiple auto trans control unit faults, but the car ran fine. I eventually switched to a manual ECU with a piggyback to scale injectors and adjusted the distributor to retard timing.

For a tC, I don't know if the auto ECU would behave the same way, or if it would put you into some kind of "limp mode" due to TCU communication problems. The best solution in your scenario would be to get a manual ECU, and have it tuned using the AEM FIC piggyback. That will allow you to retain all ECU functionality while adjusting for injectors and being able to retard timing by about 1 degree per psi of boost for good measure.