Auto to manual bellhousing bolts???
 

I'm doing my auto to manual swap on my s13 soon but I have run into a few issues with the writeups I have read.

1: Some of them say you need 8 five speed tranny bellhousing bolts because the auto ones are too short. The FSM says there are 9.

2:There have been a few writeups and a few people posting saying they only use 4 bell housing bolts not including the starter bolts. That would be one right under the starter bolts and three on the exhaust side. They say the lower bolts arent needed because they are only there to bolt the lower gusset to the bellhousing and the gusset isnt neccessary (These bolts would be the ones with the nuts on the end). And they say the upper bolts are a huge PITA to get to and not worth breaking tools to put in. Leaving only four that actually bolt the bellhousing to the block.

Does anyone have any experience with this and can provide first hand experience with running less bellhousing bolts than factory? I dont see how the setup explained can do any harm but I just want to make sure. I have seven bellhousing bolts and if i can get my transmission in with just that I'll be happy.

yes the long bolts holding the starter can be a pain but not impossible. getting the tranny back on is a bit of a chore but that's when the longer bolts should be installed. the upper bolts are actually easy to get to.

more important than the length is the torque of the bolts. the two bolts have different torque specs. so i'd say you should us all the bolts in their respective location.

Well I'm not worried about the starter bolts. And I want to put all the bolts where they belong, I really dont think most of the shorter bolts could even reach some of the holes. I only have three bolts with nuts on them (I take it those are the ones for the gusset plate). I guess I'll find out when I finally get under the car lol.

Here is one of the threads I got some info from. http://www.zilvia.net/f/showthread.p...ighlight=bolts

umm, we don't like for other people to post links from other websites including "tech related info" i'm going to have to ask you to take that down.

-admin

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LMAO!!! Well if it was on this site I wouldnt have to post the link now would I? haha, But seriously now there is a thread about this here so people wont have to go somewhere else...... I'm just saying.