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Auto to Manual Swap
Came across a guy who was selling his manual transmission Altima with modest performance mods and block work. I went ahead and bought the car as a means of getting my manual swap plans jumping off.
The Parts Car
The 93 Altima with a swapped 96 KA24DE, rebuilt, cleaned, machined and polished head ports, and blueprinted and balanced crankshaft. It also came with a host of other performance goodies that I either kept or sold.
The Swap
I started the swap mid-December right after I was done with final exams at school in blacksburg. The plan was to buy the car, drive it down to school, find a garage to pull both motors and transmissions, drop in the parts car tranny and motor, install any other parts from the parts car that I wanted, part out the parts car to make back some money.
First thing was to pull my current motor out:
Labels for wires and hoses for reinstall.
Working with the axles
And after a day and a half of disconnecting this and pulling off that, Ready to pull the motor on Day 2
My Girlfriend putting together the engine hoist and then we linked up the chains:
It was just me and my girl for the whole swap. The auto tranny was huge and giving us some problems on the pull, so we waited till the next morning to pull it out. We pulled tranny and motor out together for both cars.
Next was the parts car motor and tranny. We pulled this in under 2 days now that we had one engine pull under our belt, and the manual trans, being a bit smaller than the auto, made for an easier pull:
And both motors out
Silly pics: Me and my helper...
Next was to prep the block, clean it, and swap over the intake manifold, distributor assy., water pump and coolant, oil filter assy, etc. to the new block.
My original motor's ports and the new motors ports:
Original motor and new motor
And on the 7th day, the new motor was dropped in. Went rather smooth
The Tranny Swap
Getting the transmission in was the easy part. Took me few days to get the manual transmission's supporting cast from one car to the other. The clutch pedal itself took nearly 3 days, with major hang ups and gut checking along the way. It was rough, wanted to just set fire to the whole project. But I got it all in.
Clutch Cylinder and the other side of the firewall where the clutch pedal connects:
Some clutch piping and the fluid distribution block
And, now we have three pedals.
The part car came with a Stillen short shifter. Took that and swapped over the shifter linkage. Easy stuff from here on out.
And after that it was just some wiring and the car turned over on the third try (loose battery connection) on the 12th day.
Took alot of time, but overall wasnt too difficult. Days 8 through 11 involved prepping, cleaning and painting the motor black. The motor and transmission are both holding up well and havent had any problems from either one.
Summer 2006 I installed a Fluidyne Aluminum Radiator to replace the stock trash unit. Dont have any pics prior to the install, but here are some with it in the car.
Racing Line Poly Motor Mount Inserts install
Mounts prior to intalling inserts
After Install 
