Swap Page 1

Where to start?
Make sure you have a lot of metric wrenches, sockets (short and deap), various wratchets (1/4, 1/2, 3/8), and a good torque wrench, If you don't have access to a vehicle lift, I would suggest you find one or be prepared for a struggle. I am fortunate enough to belong to a car club (Dream Machines) that has a 4 point lift. I will also include the necessary wiring diagrams we created to get the car running. It is a goos idea to find all the pages of the Helms that you will be using and place post-its at the top.

Auto Transmission Removal Tips
The Helms is good tool and give a protocal to the dismateling process. Start on page 14-125 and continue to do so until you reach page 14-127. Here you have two options. The first is to follow the book, but if you are having trouble seperating the lower arm lke I did, you can unfasten the sway bar, radius rods, and take the damper fork bolts out. This will allow you enough swing to remove the axles. If you don't have a good ball joint remover, I recommend using our method. . We tried two of the Pitman Pullers with no luck. I actual ripped a seal trying. If you can't get the Honda tool listed in the Helms, just use the method we figured out. Now you are back to following the Helms, but the Helms only take you so far. The book doesn't expect you to swap trannies. With the tranny out you can now get the shift cable out and put the new 5spd one in. This looks tricky at first because it looks like you may have to drop your exhaust to get access, but it will unbolt with a little creativity. (my header and cat bolts are so rusted we would of had to cut them off) The space it tight, but one you undo the heatsheild protecting the cable, you can unbolt the plate holding the cable in place and be glad you didn't have to take the exhaust off to gain access. You can use page 14-204 for a reference. At this point you might as well put the replacement 5spd cables in place. The great thing about this swap is 99% bolts right up and a lot of the nuts and bolt can be reused..

Manual Transmission Installation Tips
Page 12-3 is a good reference page to stick a bookmark in. Start with pages 12-8 to 12-11 to get you started. This will cover the flywheel and clutch installation. When tightening up the flywheel and clutch, the Helms shows this being done using a ring gear holder (honda tool). We did not have this tool so we just held the crank in place from the other side (located in driverside wheel well) with a breaker style wrench. Now you will skip to page 13-10 to start the installation of the trans. You will continue from that page until the book tells you to reverse the order of the removal instuctions. At this point read up on the instuctions and get used to reading the steps in reverese and figuring out how to apply them properly. Continue to read/install the tranny and you will notice on page 13-7 that they removed the lower header pipe. You DO NOT need to remove this pipe. I'm not sure why this is in the book because we had no trouble with it being in place. I honestly don't think we would have been able to remove it without cutting the bolts anyway. Don't forget to run the hydrolic lines. The line as you can see will be very hard to fish through all the stuff in your engine compartment. We go a little creative and ran it where ever it fit the best. We used a line bender to help us reroute it. It basically your call on how you should run the lines, but make sure you don't kink the line too much. I used zip-ties to fasten the hydrolic line to various point.