Manual conversion - will it change fuel economy???

[landspeed]

I have a 1989 Bluebird Automatic. Here in NZ it is like the US - mostly automatics.

I wonder what a manual would do for my fuel economy? If you look at my gaslog you will see it is slowly creeping up (the rad block has helped).

My car's current gearbox is an auto, and a particularly failure-prone model (often fails at 100,000 miles... my car has done 110,000 miles...). I have been doing engine-off coasting for about 10-12% of my daily commute, or about 2.4 miles per day with the engine off, at an average speed of 40mph. The manual says to tow it at no more than 30mph, for 30 miles, if you tow it with the wheels on the ground... So I have been severely abusing the poor transmission but it is still going strong with no complaints.

Anyway, the experiment I propose, is to take a known Nissan Bluebird (my car), with an extreme hypermiler behind the wheel, and then run the following test:

(1) Auto gearbox with extreme hypermiling (e.g. my current figures)
(2) Manual gearbox with extreme hypermiling (after conversion).

What do you think? A good idea or not? Has anyone on here ever done a before and after for this conversion?

Anyway. Stage 1 is commencing this weekend. I am doing a 600-mile round trip on Sunday to collect a near-complete conversion kit (will have everything except for the clutch pedal + master cylinder... They will be easy enough to source seperately). I will have everything else (gearbox, clutch, flywheel, mountings, screws, all driveshafts, gearstick, gearstick surrond, linkage, speedometer drive). This is costing my NZ$80 for all the parts, which is probably about $60 US. A good price I think And is about the price of 85% of a tank of fuel...

Stage 1.5 is when the US company finally gets my cycle battery ready And I can then take my car off the road and do the swap while commuting on the e-bike.