What Manual tranny goes in a 1999 Ford Taurus where a auto tranny did

[GasSavers_Shrek]

Engine 3.0L
don't know tranny

[GasSavers_Erik]

Go to: www.car-part.com and search for a manual transmission for your car. It will show transmissions from other cars/years that are the same and will also fit.

Don't forget that you will need a flywheel, pressure plate, clutch disk and possibly the following parts: an intermediate axle shaft, different starter, axles and transmission mount.

The easiest way to check to see if you can reuse your starter, axles etc. is to go somewhere like autozone.com and look up these parts and see if there is a different part number for the auto vs. manual trans.

You will also need a clutch pedal assembly/clutch master cylinder, clutch line and slave cylinder.

I just did an auto to manual tranny swap on a 94 Accord. I was able to get everything at a "you-pull" type salvage yard for about $150 and 6 hours of work there.

[GasSavers_Scott]

One of my first cars was a 57 Chevy 210 Post, it came with a Saganaw 3 speed on a Hurst shifter. With no synchro in 1st, it was a bear to drive, I swapped out a Turbo 400 auto 3 speed, 68 Cadillac drive shaft, to a 58 Pontiac positration rear end. It ran great.

Now on the Taurus, just like the Pontiac Grand Am and Grand Prix, they made millions of these cars in America, I dont ever remember seeing one with a stick shift, I have heard of a Canadian option though. I know Taurus had 2 transmissions, the AX4S and the SES. The AX4S from what I have been told is a trans that takes off in 2nd gear and can only be dropped into 1st gear after you stomp on the gas pedal. The SES is a trans that can be manually shifted into 1st. Ford had 2 suppliers and as cars were assembled, whatever trans came in that day got installed into your car. Like most transmissions, the only way to tell which is which is by crawling under your car and counting the number of bolts and shape of the pan. I got this information from carsurvey.org.

The Ford Taurus was a super successful design, starting out in the 80's. it took Toyota and Nissan and forced them to make the Camry and Maxima, to compete in the family sedan market. The Taurus always had either the 3.0 or 3.8 V6 under the hood and many people I have talked to said they could get 30 mpg out of them on highway cruise. I always wished Ford would have made the Taurus with the 2.3 Ford 4 cylinder, the great Pinto engine, but I dont ever recall hearing of that option. One option that may give you a glimmer of hope is Ford's S.H.O. line. There was a period in the 90's that Ford made a performance sedan out of the Taurus and called it the S.H.O. I dont know if it had a 5 speed option or adaptable parts. The other 5 speed out there and this is a long shot may be the Mercury Cougar V6/Ford Probe V6, their made by Mazda and I dont know if the 5 speeds will matt up to Ford's V6.

Also if you have the engine and trans out of the car, spend the money and install new head gaskets on the engine. It's one of Ford's greatest failures, the head gaskets blow after 140k sometimes earlier. And if you've had the luck I had, my Ford Aerostar and my Explorer let go their head gaskets on the highway, blew the tank off the radiator and hydrolocked a cylinder breaking a connecting rod, pretty much the engine was a throw away.

So happy hunting, the joy of cobbling together a car out of the junkyard is fun. Also if you find a 5 speed, the CPU may need to be changed to a manual CPU.

[GasSavers_RoadWarrior]

HG failure is the 3.8/4.2 endemic problem, 3.0 should be okay.

I think there was a manual with a 2.5 HSC motor for fleet use, but they got worse MPG than the 3.0s.

[GasSavers_Erik]

How about a manual trans from a 1992 tempo with the 3.0? If you know they didn't change belhousings or crankshaft bolt patterns then it will bolt up.

The issues that you may run into are transmission mount, shifter and clutch pedal compatibility (you'd have to get these of the Tempo and cut a hole in the firewall for the slave cylinder rod)

[GasSavers_RoadWarrior]

The '95 and previous Taurus had a manual with the 3.0

[GasSavers_RoadWarrior]

Gah, nevermind, the 3.0 to '95 was a vulcan, the 3.0 in a '99 is a Duratech/Mazda A6, you might be able to use a mazda manual from a 2.5 or 3.0 Mazda application, but expect to be fabbing your own mounts.

[kamesama980]

the vulcan was used till they switched to the 500 in 05/06. the mazda engine was the optional twin-cam engine.

[sdewolfe]

Hello. Brand new here so I hesitate to post such a negative first post. But you need to know what you are getting into with this swap.

Go over to the www.Contour.org web site. The Contour used the 2.5L Duratec. Those guys have been sucessfully swapping 3.0L long blocks into their cars for several years now. But it is no easy task.

In the forums, search out the discussions concerning swapping a 3.0 Duratec into a Contour/Mystic/Mondeo. Read everything you can find on the subject.

The MTX75 5-speed will bolt up to the 3.0 with some minor mods. But you have to consider a lot of things besides the physical connection between the block and transaxle.

There was never a Duratec/manual transmission setup for the Taurus from the factory. You will have to source everything from a donor Contour.

There will be no pilot bearing hole machined into your crankshaft. The flywheel must fall exactly on the same plane relative to the transaxle as it would on a 2.5L engine. That will mean exacting measurements and shims. You will need to get a machinist involved.

You will have to fit the pedal and shifter assemblies from the donor car into your Taurus. That is no small task in itself. Many happy hours of measuring, fabricating, and test fitting await.

You may end up designing and fabricating a chassis mount for the MTX75; I don't know the pick-up points in the Taurus but I am guessing they are not present for the manual transmission.

The wiring harness will need to be modified. Which opens another can of worms.

The ECU will not be happy with a manual transmission. I don't know exactly what the ECU will do about the loss of transmission signals. Maybe it will just set a check engine light and ignore the PCM. Maybe it will be forced into a default lookup table. I just don't know. I am sure the vehicle speed sensor signal will be wrong and that will definitely set a default safe mode. You will have to solve that riddle along the way.

If it won't run properly without those transmission feedback signals, are you prepared to change out the fuel injection to SDS or MegaSquirt or ???

If you are contemplating this change to improve MPG, it may well do that. But study long and hard before you get into this swap. It won't be easy. More importantly, it won't be cheap. It will never pay for itself. As an exercise in problem solving it will be interesting. If hotrodders have taught us anything it is this: any drivetrain can be coupled to any engine in any chassis. How much time, effort, and money do you want to spend?

Regards,


--
Mr. Shannon DeWolfe -- I've taken to using mister because my name misleads folks on the WWW. I am a 53 year old fat man. ;-)

[Jay2TheRescue]

Thanks for that informative post, but I think the engine computer problem must already be solved. What do the 3L Contour drivers doing? My guess is you may end up putting a contour computer in the car as well.