Kentucky - Louisville - Volvo Of Louisville

[blown_volvo850r]

First off, I'm great friends w/ a guy that works there, George Frazier...great guy. He's owned 3 Miatas (300whp, 400whp, and 500whp Monster Miata), a 600whp RX-7 w/ a T88, and now he and his wife have 2 Lotus Elises, one of them won a huge national race, I forget which. So George...he's fine.

Tom...a guy in parts. I called him and talked to him about getting an M59 gearbox for my 5-spd swap. This is how it went.

"Hey Tom, I'm planning out things for a 5-spd swap in my 850 R, and I'm getting a price check for an M59 gearbox from a '98 S70 R."

"Ur car is an automatic?"

"Yes."

"That's a bad idea."

"Why's that?"

"Well first off, u'll need a flywheel since u don't have one already on ur automatic." WTF??? "U'll need a new ECU to program in the manual transmission, plus a new TCU to program it." Right, programming a manual transmission. Nice one, Tom. "U'll need other things too."

"I know, I need a clutch kit, master cylinder, slave cylinder, linkage cables, pedals, shifter, etc."

"U'll also have to cut a bunch in the console to fix it, and a hole for the pedal."

"No I won't...it's all bolt-up...the plate in the middle bolts up, and there's already a hole for the pedal. I've done my research, Tom."

"It's still a bad idea. They didn't make the 850 R in mind w/ a 5-spd."

"Uh, yeah they actually made them w/ 5-spds, they were only sent to Canada and kept in Europe."

"Yes, well those were very different from the American ones."

"Ok thanks Tom, can u tell the price? M59 gearbox from a '98 S70 R."

"It is $1822 if u turn in the core, but u don't have a core. The core charge is $300."

"Alright, well it's $2122 then. It doesn't matter, I'm getting $2000 for my transmission as it is."

"It's still a very bad idea, and I would recommend not doing it."

"Thanks Tom." [click]

~Lee