my friend and i just finished a auto to manual conversion in my truck. i am very thankful for all of his help. the manual trans is taller then the auto. i had to cut the floor pan out and weld in a small hump. the shift tower still comes through about 3inches. thats okay cause the hurst rubber boot covers that up. all of the holes were already in the firewall for the pedal assembly. just had to remove the rubber plugs. the manual trans is shorter then the auto. i put in the driveshaft for the manual trans.manual trans came with a transfer case so i used that transfer case and my old 4wd drive shaft. had to run a jumper wire for the tempature sending unit to the pcm. temp sending unit wire runs through auto trans harness for some stupid reason. installed the pcm for a manual trans too. starters are different too. you need a manual trans starter. only problem that i have is the coolant temp guage does not work. sometime this week or next my friend is going to see if there is way to get that working. your check gauge light will stay on do to the auto trans temp gauge not being used. i put black touch up paint over the check gauge light. the steering column will be needed too. the manual column has a lock on it. you may need that for inspection.
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the auto gear selector comes out of the cluster.there is a plain black plate that goes there. i got the plain black plate out of a manual trans cluster. so i dont know if you can jsut buy that plate. i advise getting a transfercase/transmission assembly and useing that. i had it easy cause my friends truck was a manual and he wanted a auto. so we had two trucks to swap stuff back and forth