Hey guys. I'm going to go ahead and start this thread. I'm doing an auto to manual swap for a friend of mine. He bought a '96 F-250 donor truck and we got started tearing it apart last weekend. All I have left to do is pull the engine from the donor truck and it can go to the scrap yard. Here is a pic of the donor truck





He is going to take the trans and t-case up to the shop to get rebuilt before we put it in his truck. This is going to be a fairly quick swap when we get around to it in a couple weeks. Our goal is to only have his truck down for 2 days. He is getting a new pedal assembly, hydraulics, and shifter boot this week. I'm going to get his clutch on the way from Valair hopefully this week or next week. Hopefully we can get his truck in the shop and do the swap in a few weeks.

I have everything from the parts truck. Computer, trans, t-case, t-case linkage, crossmember, driveshafts (both trucks are the same cab configuration) wiring if we need it, etc. so this should go relatively easy.

 

Looks like a fun project. Are you going to put a short throw in it?

 

That truck looks like it has a lot of good parts on it I'd part it out to get some money back from the swap you get more then just taking it to the scrap yard

 

That poor truck looks like it came from the scrap yard. Lol

It kinda looks like they jumped a hill and landed on the noise

 

Travis,
I am sure you already know this but just to be sure.. When I did my swap I took the harness ( from pcm incl. under hood fuse box all the way around the front and over to the map and gpr) from the donor. no splicing or re pinning connectors. just plug and play!! good luck!!

 

Should go pretty smooth with everything you have from the donor truck Travis. Two days should be plenty of time. When Tyler bought his cc, we swapped his eclb from ZF back to auto, and the cc from auto to ZF in 2 1/2 days.

 

How's the core support? Is he thinking about parting anything?

 

I will have to see what is usable after I yank the engine out of it. The truck was wrecked to the point that the frame broke in half. Lol

He may get a short throw at some point, but not yet. When I pull my trans out, I will have a short throw setup and it will either go to Cody or this guy I'm sure.

Jason, I actually wasn't sure if the PCM connector was pinned differently or not, but I guessed it was and planned to use the harness from the donor truck. That was a question I meant to post in the original post.

Here's a pic of the broken frame. I drove it about a mile this way when we went to look at it to see if the trans and engine were running ok. Lol.

 

That definitely classifies as a good donor truck!

 

out of curiosity - what is the difference in the engine wire harnesses/PCM pins between auto and manual transmissions?

i'm gearing up to do my auto to zf swap soon, but don't have a donor truck from which to swap over everything - been gathering parts little by little. from what i've read up to this point, i haven't seen anything about a wire-harness swap being needed... did i miss something?

 

OldWoodsDiesel, I'm trying to figure out the PCM pinouts also. Does anyone have the manual and auto PCM pinouts handy? If so, I will probably use the auto harness as its in better shape. Changing pins only takes a few minutes to do. I have done that a bunch of times. It's easy.

 

my understanding was that there were only two electrical system differences between the auto and manual trans (aside from the PCM software):

1. the connector from the PCM to the auto trans has several (5 or 6, i think) pins to control the auto trans solenoids, whereas the manual trans has just 2 pins for the reverse gear sensor to turn on the backup lights. i was just going to test out for the two pins that turn on the backup lights and connect the wires to the sensor however's easiest. blade sockets, whatever...

2. the clutch pedal switch that doesnt let you start the truck without the clutch pedeal depressed and also disengages cruise control when depressed. however, from my reading, this connector is supposedly already in an auto trans truck, its just jumpered so that the circuit is always closed. if you plug it into the pedal sensor it'll just add two (arguably just one) safety element to the truck...

i'm curious to see if anyone chimes in with anything else i haven't come across.

 

The PCM has NO connection to the manual tranny. The reverse light circuit is purely electromechanical, with no electronic connection to the PCM. So the pins on the automatic PCM that control the tranny simply aren't in play in a manual truck. So the only "harness" associated with the manual trans is the reverse light switch connector, which is a simple two-wire pigtail available for a few bucks at RockAuto.

 

are the two wires that the pigtail would connect to not currently contained within the e4od connection? or another way - isn't there just one connector going to the E40D, such that the 2 reverse light wires need to be extracted from that connector and pinned into the two-wire pigtail like you said?

i could just answer this question by looking under my truck, but i'm curretly stuck in my office working for 'the man.'

 

And I could answer by consulting the EVTM, but I'm likewise stuck.....

But yeah, two of the wires on the connector that used to go to the E4OD are for the reverse lights. It's a simple single-throw switch, not polarized, not grounded, so once we identify those two wires, you could just cut them short of the connector and splice in the pigtail. I have no idea if the actual termials are the same shape on the manual reverse switch vs. the E4OD connector, so extracting them from the connector might not work.