80 Series H151F 5 Speed Manual Transmission Swap - Includes RHD HDJ81 & LHD FZJ80

[sadovnik]

Yes they do! About $1800 last time I looked a few months ago.
Shipping was about $1000.

Then tariffs on top of that, which are very high because you get tariffed two fold - once for a general Japanese tariff, and then again for a steel and aluminum tariff.

Yup. 50% tariff on Japanese steel or aluminum products. I was going to order steelies from Japan but there was no way I was paying a 50% tariff on those wheels. I opted to buy the FJ Co. wheels which come from Europe and aren't subject to that additional tariff.

 

[alia176]

Yes they do! About $1800 last time I looked a few months ago.
Shipping was about $1000.

Then tariffs on top of that, which are very high because you get tariffed two fold - once for a general Japanese tariff, and then again for a steel and aluminum tariff.

wowza!!

 

[nestor]

Why is Australia better over Japan?

well, swapping auto to manual H151 with diffs on 4.1 ratio is not very good
currently with auto and diffs 4.1 - I have ~2100 rpms when driving with 60 mph on 4th gear (A443) - tire size 31.6
when I swap to manual it will be around 2500~2600 when driving with 60 mph on 5th gear (H151) - tire size 31.6
and yes, if you increase tire size you can have benefits, but I stick to ~32 size and that's the reality

This will result in more fuel consumption and to avoid this I need to regear diffs to high ratio like 3.7 which will cost $$$$

However in Australia they tunning 5th from 0.88 to 0.81 like it's on H152.
Not only that but they have kits for H151 and H152 for towing increased capacity on 5th.
Last time when I spoke with a guy that makes these changes and shipping the transmissions world wide he mentioned prices that were fair.

I already had my H151 and I'm not in Australia, so these changes are not available for me. Unfortunately they don't sell the kits, but only install them on new or your transmission.
There is another solution for the problem that I mentioned above with regearing the transfer case with sumo gears and will not cost $$$$ but $$$
so it's good to think all these before you enter the road of swapping to manual.

 

[glinskonian]

First, I want to thank @gnarlynick2072, @Rock40, and others that created this thread as it was of great help while sourcing all the parts and working on the conversion on my 80.

To contribute to this thread, I will add some ideas how we did it on mine. We (@FJ40Jim and I) went a slightly different route when planning and mounting the transmission crossmember to accommodate for the shorter and more fun H15x type manual transmissions.

We decided to use a Slee Off Road (@sleeoffroad) Belly Skid Plate and modify it slightly to make it work. I have always loved the Slee Belly Plate as I think it is VERY beefy and very clean:

SLEE - Belly Skid Plate - High Strength Steel - '93-97 Land Cruiser / Lexus LX 450 - Slee Off Road

Features Low profile design Direct bolt on Replaces factory cross member No need to remove for fluid changes Durable powder coat finish Recessed hardware High Strength Low Alloy (HSLA) has nearly twice the strength and impact resistance of general purpose mild steel (A1011 and A36). 30-36ksi...

sleeoffroad.com

View attachment 3528273
(Slee belly plate link functional as of the date of this post)

There are 3 small modifications needed to make all this work and several advantages to doing it this way. Let's tackle what is needed first and then I will address the advantages.

View attachment 3528257

Modifications:

1. The Slee Belly Plate has enough material on the leading edge of the cross member allowing you to just drill the holes forward to accommodate for the H15x type transmissions (see marking 1 in red below). You will also need to drill holes in the bottom of the plate to allow you to put the fasteners in. This will become evident once you start working on this.
2. When you drill the new holes (I can't remember the exact number, but around 2.5" forward), about 1/4 off the transmission mount ends up unsupported. To solve this, JimC welded a 1" angle iron and rounded the edges of the angle iron so it wouldn't be sharp or get caught anywhere (see marking 2 in red below).
3. Since the H15x type transmissions are shorter than the A442 and A343 automatic counterparts, as you might expect, the Transfer case also moves forward. The Transfer case has ribs on the bottom tail shaft housing that will interfere with the Slee crossmember once it moves forward. To solve this, we made a cut on the cross member as shown in marking 3 in red. The portion that was cut, was then flipped and welded to keep/maintain the structural integrity of the crossmember (see marking 3 in red below).

View attachment 3528262

Advantages:

In my mind, there are several advantages of doing it this way. I will list a few, but I am sure there are others I am not thinking about:

1. This approach requires zero modification to the frame, making it transferrable to any other US-based 80-series platform or any automatic 80-series without any additional work required. You can move your complete drivetrain to any other truck virtually in the blink of an eye.
2. The Slee cross member is beefier and stronger than the factory Toyota crossmember. Your transfer case ends up being fully protected by the Slee belly plate and you end up with a stronger mounting solution.
3. Transmission and Transfer Case are now mounted and supported by the regular 8 big bolts that hold the plate to the frame mounted transmission crossmember, but also an additional 4 smaller bolts behind the cross-member portion of the belly plate.
4. Since the location of the mounting structures remains the same as for the automatic transmissions, all the additional aftermarket items that are designed here in the U.S. for the automatic trucks will still work without any additional modifications (specially referring to rock sliders with this comment here. On the first photo of this post, you can see that if you move the mounting position forward, the U-bolt holding the rock slider on the driver side (LHD) will need to be modified as it will then interfere with the new mounting location).

Hope this helps,

-Alberto

This is probably the best way to solve the crossmember/mount relocation imo, provided you want to spend on the skid plate and have fab skills.

However, I was too cheap to buy the skid plate, nor do I really need such a beefy skid plate, nor do I have the fab skills!
So here's what I did instead. This was suggested to me by @ofer bruhis who went this route for his manual swap in his 80.

I bought a 1/4" steel plate and bolted that into the original crossmember holes where the trans mount bolts into.
I had a local steel supply shop cut the plate to size, and mine measures about 6.5" long x 6 1/3" wide. The shop charged me $11, not bad. I used 5/8" bolts to secure it to the crossmember.

Ignore the toes!

I have yet to drill the holes for the relocated trans mount, but it should be pretty straight forward once I mock up the crossmember with the plate installed.
To make sure the new holes were perfectly lined up with the crossmember holes, I 3D printed a very simple "plug" that fits into the existing holes, then made a small hole in the middle for a transfer punch to fit into. Worked great.

This is a picture of Ofer's installed. Even though it raises the transmission by 1/4", it shouldn't be enough to cause any problems and the rubber engine mounts will have plenty of give to accommodate that. Ofer has 100k miles on his so far with no issues:

 

[glinskonian]

Thank you ikarus!
My conclusion from the research was pointing the same part numbers for front and rear, but wanted to be sure before ordering.
These 2 specs are from MTM - VX - 1fe-fz (1995 - 1998) LHD
FZJ80L-GNMEKV
FZJ80L-GCMEKV

I ended up having a local shop shorter and lengthen my original driveshafts. They did a great job. About $400 for everything (they didn't replace the u joints)

 

[LimitingFactor]

Regarding the ECU issue, has anyone tested and confirmed they were able to resolve the CEL light and emissions testing complications by using another MT ECU from a different market? South America/GCC? It seems like there are partial fixes but nothing completely solved the issue. If doing this swap in CA, does a Montana plate become necessary?

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Tried that in NC a number of years ago. The MT obd2 protocol from Latin America or South American countries is different than ours, so it didn't work for emissions. Cleared the cel, but didn't allow a computer emissions check to pass.

 

[Tapage]

And for reference, these 1FZ-FE ECU from our non Emissions regulated markets, run very rich ..

 

[glinskonian]

Has anyone experienced the O/D off light flashing after the swap? Mine has been doing this intermittently. I have already relocated the accelerometer, so no more ABS light.

Do I need to remove the shifter selector computer (I think that's what it's called) from the old PRNDL assembly and plug it in?

 

[Tapage]

Has anyone experienced the O/D off light flashing after the swap? Mine has been doing this intermittently. I have already relocated the accelerometer, so no more ABS light.

Do I need to remove the shifter selector computer (I think that's what it's called) from the old PRNDL assembly and plug it in?

How do you manage the reverse .. ?

In my case / experience it was related to it ...

 

[glinskonian]

How do you manage the reverse .. ?

In my case / experience it was related to it ...

Are you OBD I or II?
I'm OBD I, but all I had to do was use the appropriate H152 backup connector and pin it to the 2 reverse wires (I can't remember the colors).

 

[Tapage]

Interesting ..

Well Marilu was OBD I

in my HDJ80 factory auto .. reverse was trigged by positive coming from the A442F but the Manual H151 in Factory HDJ80 use the reverse ground sensor to a circuit ..

I had to recreate this scenario in my swap back in the day.

Are you OBD I or II?
I'm OBD I, but all I had to do was use the appropriate H152 backup connector and pin it to the 2 reverse wires (I can't remember the colors).

 

[rannon]

To revive a thread here... Did you have to navigate OBDII with your 151 swap? I have a 1995 FZJ I am planning this on and am curious what others may have done regarding ECU stuff?

 

[GCCFZJ]

To revive a thread here... Did you have to navigate OBDII with your 151 swap? I have a 1995 FZJ I am planning this on and am curious what others may have done regarding ECU stuff?

With a manual trans swapping to a haltech ecu would be a great option.