Gentry

[Crom 0]

I have quite a nice low mileage one of these and wish it was a manual. Would you change the box or the car?

[jackherer 543]

25 years of boring drudgery and in an afternoon you could transform it into a proper 205. It's an easy decision but it depends on your experience I guess.

[Telf 224 2 Cars]

Change the box! there are enough people on here to help you along if you get stuck- start taking it to bits and shout for help if/when it goes wrong.

Edited November 8, 2018 by Telf

[Crom 0]

Thats a good answer. What is the best source of parts to achieve this with the least grief? All suggestions gratefully listened to. 

[jackherer 543]

I would suggest a wanted ad on here!

 

You can get some parts from e.g. Ebay.

 

Make sure the gearbox you get has suitable ratios for the engine.

 

It's not a huge list of parts you need really:

 

Gearbox

Flywheel

Clutch

Pedal box and clutch cable

Gear stick and linkages

Gear stick gaiter

 

The only thing I'm not sure about is the subframe, I'm not sure if it will have the bracket for the gear linkage pivot or not. I just looked on servicebox and there doesn't seem to be a specific subframe for automatics so it looks like your one will be OK.

 

 

There are two types of manual gearbox for the 205 GTI, BE1 (early) and BE3 (late) and you need the matching gearstick and clutch pedal/cable too. As your car is a later model it would be appropriate to go with BE3 parts.

[Telf 224 2 Cars]

Call round your local scrap yards. It's surprising what turns up or is sitting there waiting to be reused. 

[Crom 0]

Sadly I had an excellent small scrapyard within sight of my house but it closed earlier this year due to new regs and everything got crushed. The place was very well run environmentally, I think that due to its size they couldn't meet the requirement for tyres being kept a certain distance from anything else. 

  So, Ive been spoilt in the past looks like I'm going to have to get off my arse a bit more. Thanks for the advice.