Thread: 300 Tdi Auto to Manual Feasability?

A flywheel, clutch and pressure plate, hyd. master and slave cylinders, bell housing and gearbox, pedals, centre cosole would/should cost more than having your Auto repaired.
The Auto is so much better on and off-road and would have a better resale as well, just my thoughts, Regards Frank.

If what Tank says is true about better re-sale on autos maybe you could grab a beaten up tdi manual, swap the boxes and bits and sell it on?

Originally Posted by Tank

....
The Auto is so much better on and off-road ...

are you sure!

If you buy all reco/new stuff I concur with tanks first comment.

if you grab a complete wrecked second hand vehicle (rollover/ back end damage) then it becomes viable if you do most of the work yourself.

you can get vehicles in said condition for about $1K and you get to sell on any other parts to help cover costs.

ITs about a weeks worth of work to DIY.

Cheers guys

Yeah wouldn't be going new/re-co stuff I don't think it's worth it for what I want the car for, I'll just find good second hand bits

If I do the conversion I won't be selling the car anymore, might aswell keep it and do what I originally wanted to with it (ute or toy conversion)

I would go the way Dave suggests with a write-off and then wreck it (much to mums disgust) unless one of dads mates happened to have one wrecking at the time for me to pull parts off...

I figure if I buy a complete car from say pickles and then swap the boxes and sell the parts and my old box I will either break even or maybe even make money on wrecking the car and then selling my auto box for a rebuild.... Hopefully...

Well I'll leave my car parked and look round

A week is not that scary I think I'd be plenty capable enough to do it all, especially of I could do straight swaps

Cheers
Will

And as the the whole auto vs manual thing offroad, I think if you can actually drive and know what's going on and the right gear or the situation etc then a manual will run rings around an auto, and I've driven both... at first I would have said auto, but my driving ability has improved and I've found the short comings of an auto and a gutless motor a major downfall... IMO

Each to their own

Cheers
Will

Originally Posted by MR LR jnr.

And as the the whole auto vs manual thing offroad, I think if you can actually drive and know what's going on and the right gear or the situation etc then a manual will run rings around an auto, and I've driven both... at first I would have said auto, but my driving ability has improved and I've found the short comings of an auto and a gutless motor a major downfall... IMO

Each to their own

Cheers
Will

Well Will, here's a scenario for you, coming out of Bendethra on a wet and rainy day I towed with my Disco 1 300TDi Auto a SIII LWB fully loaded and a camper trailer up a section of steep road after the SIII lost traction on loose stones and greasy clay.
We tried to back the SIII and trailer back down to an Eco drain to make it easier to move off the mark, but the camber of the road slid the trailer to the edge of the track, with at least a 500' drop. So with both vehicles and trailer on the slippery slope I took up the slack and as the revs rose to just over idle (around 800rpm) all 4 wheels started to spin (F&R Diff Locks fitted). The only way forward was keeping the revs around 700/750rpm until we started moving slowly forward, once momentum was gained I upped the revs and drove with no more traction loss to the top of the hill.
An Auto transmission multiplies torque at low revs a manual g/box and clutch loses torque at low revs through slippage. In the scenario above a manual vehicle would have had uncontrollable wheelspin or burnt out a slipping clutch, BTW the distance involved here was at least 500M. There is no way a manual box vehicle would have got that SIII and trailer up that slippery slope, no way.
On a more recent occasion I towed from a standing start a D2 up the steepest, slipperiest part of Mongamulla FT from a standing start on the slope and for at least a kilometre. Have witnesses on this Forum to back up the story.
Mate I've driven up steep rocky steps at little over idle speed, where manuals are bucking and bouncing all over the place.
The only advantage that a manual has over an Auto off-road is steep downhill tracks, but I don't have that problem as I have lower gearing than standard and there is enough retardation in my disco to make it safely down any hill, Regards Frank.

hey tank, heres a scenario for you.

while returning home on a mostly disused track you fracture one of the cooler lines for the auto due to a bit of misfortune with a stick kicked up by the steering guard your 200kms out of comms range but fortunately you have 2l of engine oil in the car (because your engines burning oil at toyota rivaling rates so its low too) and enough gear to replace the hose.

do you make it home?

oh slipping clutch huh?

your auto has flipped its sprags and because of burnt oil has issues with the second gear clutch pack. can you still get moving by forcing 3rd gear then doing hi-low on the fly?

your autos pump seal gets contaminated by mud and water causing it to leak into the bell housing, it suffers a catastrophic failure, how far can you drive before the auto looses drive.

your auto roasts it TC lockup clutch, filling the filter with debry. can you just go and rip a tc out of a toyota and use that as a permanant coupling to get you home?

Hey Frank, yes that's an interesting scenario and shows the benefits of the auto, however first low in a manual is so low that I really doubt it will make any difference at all, sure you might need to slip the clutch when taking off but you could then idle up even slower I would think, realistically it will take a lot more than that to cook a clutch IMHO, we tow heavy car trailers with the td5 manuals ad use low range on the hills, not a problem there if you know what you're doing.
I do agree with you though, when I was harvesting in 2010 I saw the benefits first hand of an automatic tractor vs my manual one (there were two of us with 40t snatch straps bouncing off the back of a harvester), he could keep applying torque while my tractor span in the mud...
Personally I just like the manual for both driving pleasure and the ability to to sit on highway speeds on most hills and also the simplicity and ability to service myself

Cheers
Will