Well after a few months I thought its about time for an update. Just on 2 weeks after I bought it the auto transmission started playing up a bit. Since then its been in my garage while i've been sourcing out some parts to fix it.

I decided to go for a Manual Conversion, while it would have been easier to just buy a manual caldina, the car is nice and straight and wanted to see its full potential.
 
The gearbox conversion has so far been planned for the weekend of the 9th-10th of March.

My cousin has kindly offered the facilities of an engine hoist, transmission stand and tools.

I have so far asked for every part I could think of in the conversion package:
Gearbox
Clutch Master cylinder
Bols and Nuts for Master Cylinder/pedal boxes
Clutch Lines/brackets
Clutch Slave Cylinder and bracket (and bolts)
Manual engine dust cover and inspection plate (the metal plate that sits inbetween the engine and gearbox)
Gearbox Mount (if they might be different)
Rear Differential
Driver Side driveshaft
Flywheel
Radiator (since mine was from another car and didn't fit 100%)
Brake pedal
Clutch pedal
Shifter
The clips that hold the shifter cables in place on gearbox and shifter lever
Shifter cables
Steering Wheel
Dash Cluster

I ended up painting the gearbox and a few of the brackets. Wow what a headache that was. I'm still waiting for my transfer case to arrive, it should arrive any day now. Its been 4 months without a car :(. I wouldn't mind normally but this isn't the first time i've had a car off the road for at least 4 months haha. 

 



Still sitting in the same spot unfortunately :( I can't wait to get it out.

This weekend has been huge. I had all the parts I needed and decided to get to work on the Manual Conversion.
 
To get the car ready for towing I put the clutch brake pedal back on. The foot rest is off at the moment as I am hoping to adapt a full alloy pedal set from a ZZT231 Toyota Celica ZR model.
 
 

 
 
 
The gearbox was all ready to take to my cousins house. I had it all strapped up on the plastic pallet. The piece of wood helped support the transfer case. That thing is heavy as.

 
The Tow truck driver from Nationwide Towing was the nicest i've ever met. I was really worried about the front bar getting smashed as the tow points are about 1 inch higher than the bottom of the lip. I mentioned to the driver that i'd be more than happy to give him something a bit extra to take a bit of extra time to ensure it doesn't get damaged but mentioned it wasn't necessary and he promised me it would be intact and undamaged. He was correct, it arrived without a scratch.
 
Looks awesome on the back of the tow truck. Will be a photo for the wall :)

 
 
I arrived at my cousins house and started unloading the gearbox using his engine crane. Everything went as planned so far with regards to removing the transmission. We had to disconnect the steering knuckle, remove 2 power steering lines, remove the wiring loom and remove the crossmember bolts. Those are some very tight bolts.
 
Before you know it, I had a 193kw 2wd go kart hahaha. Now the real Challenge starts removing the manual
 

 
 
Once the wheels were off and the engine was hoisted up I needed to remove the rear crossmember. Its great to see the engine out. That Auto Tranmission was huge, not only extremely heavy but very hard to work on, there are bolts hidden away everywhere.

 
 
 
 
I have to admit I am not a dog person but my cousins dog was keeping me company throughout the last 2 days. I loved it. He was extremely scared of the impact wrench and made some attempts to bite it and nearly me in the process doh haha

 
 
Before you know it the 2 were separated, goodbye
 
One thing I noticed was on the left hand side of the image, the turbo brace has some adjust-ability on the block, you can see that there is 3-4mm distance between the top of the bracket and the turbo exhaust. I loosened the bolts and pulled the bracket so it was flush with the turbo. When I took the dump pipe off I noticed that bolt was just sitting there half wound in. I'll do it straight away.

 
 
Here we have a 3sgte auto pressure plate, i'm sure these are similar to the ones on a rav4 auto. Didnt take much to undo the nuts and remove the pressure plate

 
You will notice the pressure plate spacer. its quite easy to miss and if its not removed it will cause the flywheel to touch the gearbox housing. It just slipped off nice and easy.

 
Here we have the leaking rear main seal. I'm not sure if I can tell the source of the leak. The leak was very small but enough to be of concern long term. I wonder what the chances are like that the plate surrounding the rear main seal could have been leaking

 
I had some free time while I decide what to do with the Valeo Clutch, I am thinking of getting an exeedy clutch instead of the Valeo brand one I have at the moment.
 
I decided to battle the rear sway bar. This was the easiest job i've ever done. I've done rear sways on previous cars and nearly all have involved dropping the fuel tank straps and squeezing the bar through the smallest spot possible. The bar came out really easily.

 
As you can see there is heaps of room to remove the bar.

 
comparing the stock one next to the Cusco rear 19MM rear sway bar.

 
Here is the sway bar installed. I was curious to see that the Cusco kit provided rubber boots instead of nolathane like the whiteline kits. I am still very impressed with the kit. Looks great.

 
I keep the protective packaging bag in place till the bar is all lined up and bolted in so there is less chance of scratching the suspension.

 
More progress will come this weekend. I still need to drill out the 32mm Master Cylinder hole, mount the manual shifter and run the clutch lines. The engine and gearbox should go in this week. I am hoping to rebuild the power steering pump if I can get the parts required this week. The master cylinder rebuilt kit arrived last week so that will get fixed up this week too.

Here is the clutch pressure plate all torqued up. I used a clutch alignment tool which worked no problems.

 
Throw out bearing was also nicely greased up, but I was sure to not put on too much as it can splash off under RPM onto the pressure plate and clutch plate surfaces.

 
Here is a group of parts that still to go back on the car. Luckily the pile is getting smaller slowly. I can't wait for this to be down to 0

 
Engine from side. Gearbox all mounted, and all engine mount brackets in place. Starter motor also in place all mounted nicely. Mounting the awd gearbox was a huge job. As many GT4 celica owners would know the gearbox had to be twisted on, then put on straight due to the transfer case proximity to the motor casing.

 
My hole for the master cylinder. Unfortunately there is an existing hole in the centre hole which I will need to make a template to correctly drill in the middle.

 
I mounted the 2 shifter cables. I am quite amazed that the shifter cables actually go under floor of the car, all the other cars i've had all went through the firewall if i'm not mistaken.

 
I presumed that 3 out of the 3 engine mount brackets on the auto were going to be the same. Silly mistake on my side, 2 out of the 3 ended up being different.
 
The rear engine mount bracket does fit from the auto, but it uses a damper which won't fit, and it only mounts using 2 holes. According to my readings on Toyodiy (legendary site) that the manual gearbox doesn't use a damper on the bracket, instead it mounts using 3 bolts instead of 2.
 
I found out that the Rav 4 SXA10 and SXA11 manual models shared the same rear mount bracket as the Caldina Manuals. On the off chance I was looking on ebay and managed to find someone wrecking a Rav 4.
 

 
 
I almost forgot to put the second part of the dump pipe in place before putting the rear crossmember in place.
 


 
The part that I was most nervous about was drilling the holes for the clutch master cylinder. I kid you not i've had nightmares about stuffing this part up, once its drilled there is no way back. There are template holes from factory (the firewall is made up of 2 pieces, the interior side of the firewall was the one with the template).
 
The end result was done using the top and bottom thread bolt holes that I made up, then I made a template out of some alloy with a perfect outline of the 2 bolt holes and the centre master cylinder hole, then I bolted that to the engine bay and used the hole in the template to guide the hole saw.
 
I coated the edges so they will not rust, I also got onto rebuilding the Clutch Master Cylinder which went together without an issue. Was a great learning experience to rebuild it. The plate behind the holes is the Clutch Pedal assembly inside the car (wasn't bolted in at that stage.

 
I also got around to installing the shifter which went on without any issues. Its fantastic having 3 pedals now, it always looked like something was missing.
 
The engine will be back in this Sunday and we can work away at filling up the fluids and replacing the rear diff which shouldn't take too long.
 
I managed to munch another axle seal when installing so i'll be off to get another (or 2 lol). I should have greased the edges with some rubber grease when tapping it in as they were pretty hard to get in place.
 
My front engine mount looks like it needs replacing. I am wondering if I will be able to find one easily enough. The rear one also required some attention. The front one had quite a bit of weight on it at this stage so it has sunken down quite a bit more than it would with the car weight.


 
Its such a wierd feeling seeing the clutch pedals all lined up line like this. I've dream't of it. I still need to get to the one bolt at the very top of the dash.

 
I found this canister which doesn't have any lines coming out of it, it was wasn't hanging in the bronze frame either (just rattling around in the engine bay). Once the cars going i'll reroute these back into the vaccum system. Its likely that its a charcoal canistor (but there is another one on the driver side under the coolant bottle).

 
In transit I unfortunately scratched the powdercoat surface of one of my wheels. I'm hoping its possible to touch them up with some paint. It would only be $70-$80 to get the wheel stripped and recoated but its just a bit of unfortunate damage.

 
I spent literally 2 and a half hours trying to work out the mounting positions for the clutch line. I searched all throughout the web to try and find some diagrams. I found this spot here and it appeared to be correct.
 
It also seems that the clutch line that I was using was also bent so it took some time to carefully straighten it up and run the clutch lines amongst the firewall line holders.
 

 
This fitting next to the clutch master cylinder may be familiar to some enthusiasts. Toyota call it an Orifice lol. I believe its designed to smoothen out the clutch pressure applied to the clutch slave cylinder. I opened it up, there is 2 springs and a piston inside.

 
 
I also got around to fitting the axle seal on the passenger side, and taking the rear axles out of the diff to replace the rear inner axle seals. This all went without an issue.
 
It should be another day to get the motor/gearbox and the main components back in another another day to fix up the wiring, get the fluids in and to neatup up everything.
 
Getting close, once the engine is back in, the next part is the really fun part. Servicing the motor and filling up the fluids will be awesome fun.

Well I have some awesome updates for a Friday morning, last night I popped around to my Cousins to work on the car a bit more.
 
Neutral Start Switch
The neutral start switch was the one part I was fearing the most, i've done wiring before but its always frustrating trying to work out which wire is which. I had a wiring diagram that helped out heaps, I found that the neutral start switch was a Black wire with grey dots painted onto it. I confirmed that with the multimeter and I was well onto my way earthing the wire so the car will start in Manual now. For anyone that might have not known about a neutral start switch, when the car is normally in Park or Neutral on an automatic car the signal to the ecu (from this neutral start switch wire) is 0-1v (basically no voltage), when the ecu signals this it will let you start the car. It stops you from starting the car in Drive or Reverse for safety reasons. Since the autos don't run the neutral start switch I needed to trick the wire from the ecu to think that it was in Park or Reverse by grounding it.
 
Intercooler Installation And Bending the Engine Lift Hook
The intercooler went on without any issues except for the Engine Lift Hook which was now in the way of the intake pipe, it must have been the force of jacking the engine up that caused it to bend in (the chains that were installed were in an inverted V shape which caused the 2 jacking points to bow inwards). I got the bracket off, into the vice and we gave it an 'encouraging' hit with the hammer to get it back in line. I'd like to eventually get some new hoses for the intercooler.
 
Gearbox Cooler And Lines
This was an absolute nightmare to do. I had to try and find 3 matching bolt holes to mount the manual gearbox cooler, and then somehow tighten up the fittings to the bottom of the cooler from in between the front bumper grille. I still need to tighten up the gearbox side of the lines.
 
Replacing Vacuum Lines
I noticed there was a few vacuum lines which were a tiny bit too small (and hard) to fit back onto the lines. I believe these were signal wires for the boost controller. I found some Vacuum line which was new but similarly sized (since one side of the vacuum line needed to be bigger than the other I just had to push on a smaller vacuum line.
 
I still haven't found an easy way to put on Vacuum Lines (especially when its just one size a bit too small). I might heat it up next time. I did however use some wd40 to lubricate the rubber. Any ideas for next time would be much appreciated. 
 
Diff Installation
This was a nightmare and a half. The way Toyota designed the diff sub-frame means that you have to drop the WHOLE sub-frame enough just to be able to get the bolts out from the diff subframe. We ended up trying this and the diff replacement took only about 10 minutes in the end. Always daunting undoing such big suspension components hahaha
 
Here is the list of things left:
Torque/do up the following bolts/fittings: 3 Ball Joint Bolts/Nuts, 2x Suspension Strut Bolts, 6x strut top nuts, 6x Rear Subframe Bolts/Nuts, 8x driveshaft nuts, 4 prop shaft bolts, 1 steering knuckle bolt, 1x power steering low pressure hose clamp.
 
I just need to lift up the prop shaft in place and top up the gearbox fluid, from there i'll put the air filter box on, fit the clutch pedal assembly top firewall bolt (impossible to get with the car on the hoist), bleed the clutch and power steering then start the car LOOOOOL That will all happen tomorrow yay. I should be driving home tomorrow afternoon in a Manual Caldina ST215. All that hard work for such a rewarding result.

Dudeman
Thats some nice work and detail you have posted up here. 
 
When will this car be for sale??

I can't believe I missed a reply to my thread. Sorry mate. Thanks very much for the comments. Its a labour of love haha. Ah the old "when will this car be for sale" question hahaha. My track record isn't the best I must admit.
 
I've had 20 cars now in 10 years. Thats one every 6 months haha.
 
I know this has been sad before but this will be here to stay lol. Did I mention I bought a ST162 Celica SX for a weekend project too lol.

The manual gearbox has been going very well the last few months. I've been getting a few last bugs out of the way, the main one has been a lack of boost response. After some investigation I found both intercooler hoses were badly split on the inside, they were made of a combiation stitched rubber hose and for OEM items they seemed to have lasted quite well.
I decided it was a good opportunity to add a small amount of colour to the engine bay and decided to get a pair of aeroflow silicone hoses. One was 57mm the other was 70mm diameter. I ended up getting them both at 76mm length, the 57mm diameter needed to be shortened slightly which was easily done with a hose clamp and a stanley knife.
I used a new set of T-Bolts and reinstalled the intercooler. I also removed the intercooler cover on the top as I am slowly working at straightening up any bent fins.





Might not come up too well in the photo but there are a fair few bent fins, on the last row there is a whole section of fins squashed flat, these ones take a lot longer to bend straight. I use a pair of tweezers and work away at each one slowly. I finally got around to fixing the reverse switch, it appears that I had joined 1 wire incorrectly which was easily rectified and its all working perfectly now.

I took a few photos of the car which i've been meaning to take for some time (the front shot is a bit too over exposed).


I should have the replacement tailshaft on in the next few weeks, that will definitely get rid of the shuddering when on load or accelerating from a standstill.
I am still looking into getting some new seats, I would still love to get some ST246 N edition seats, moreso as i'll have a better chance at getting them engineered.
Other changes to come will be retrimming the door trims with some grey or black suede. The coilovers will be adjusted another inch or so to provide a neater stance.
The biggest thing to come will be installing an aftermarket Dump Pipe, High flow cat and new mid pipe. I have been meaning to take a picture of it to show just how restrictive that system is. At one section it squashes over the subframe down to about 1/2 an inch.

Great thread mate and well detailed conversion.  What is the next project??