Again, for many AE92 sedan owners out there, you are cursed with the awesome 3- or 4-speed automatic transmission. My car was also one of those cars that make it very convenient for grandmas, student drivers, and small families to go to and from the grocery store, picking up the week's groceries, and being able to tend to little Johnny in the baby seat without being bothered with shifting. Hardly a race car this makes (sounds a bit like Yoda, huh? -Carl), so it was time to take action! Since you are tearing apart the car anyways, what better time than now to convert to MTM! Besides, I'm not too sure how well the ATM would mate up to the 4A-GZE, and even if it did, you will be generating about 200% more torque than the 4A-F did. We decided in advance that we would be mating the 4A-GZE with the E51 from the JDM Levin GTZ, so we knew right off the bat that it was 5 speed time.
We picked up the shifter assembly from another 5-speed equipped AE92 sedan--any of them should work (sedan, SR5, GTS). You will also need to grab the clutch pedal assembly, the brake pedal (it's more narrow on the 5-speed), clutch master cylinder, shifter cables, and all hard lines from under the hood leading from the tranny to the cylinder. Again, the junk yard is your best friend (right Carl? ;) ) (Hey, man. Watch it! -Carl). Now is the easiest time to rebuild the cylinder, clean things out, and generally make sure things look good. Stuff coming off the wrecked vehicles can be downright nasty!
If you look underneath the console above the pedals, you can poke around and find the area where Toyota kindly placed some padding that has been scored with the correct shape and location for the clutch master cylinder. Pluck those away, and you should even see indentations where you need to drill the 3 new holes; 2 for the mounting holes, and a single large one for the clutch master cylinder to poke through. Once you get the holes drilled, make sure that you de-burr the edges to make sure there are no rough edges.
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Insert the clutch master cylinder into place, and secure it with the OEM fasteners. On the engine side, you will need to install the hard lines that you pulled from the junk yard. Again, I can't really give precise directions on how to install the hard lines. Take good notes/mental pictures, etc. of the original install from the wrecked vehicle to see how the lines should look. Luckily, we had Carl's car to use as a reference.
Once you get that installed, you will notice that the clutch pedal uses those same bolts to mount to. Install the clutch pedal, and also swap out the brake pedal while you are down there. It's just a couple of bolts that hold the pedal assembly on, and the smaller, manual shift one should bolt right into place.
It'll be easier if you pull all of the underdash panels to gain access to the pedalbox fasteners. An assortment of long extensions and deep sockets will also make the job easier on you. Whatever you do, do not loosen the lock nut on the brake M/C piston. If you've done everything right so far, it should look something like this: -Carl
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We also decided it was time to pull the eyesore, also known as the automatic shifter, out of the car. To do this, it's actually a little more involved than we first expected. You must remove the side panels (1 screw and 1 clip on each side), as well as the base of the center console (4 screws). This easily pulls up and over the automatic shifter's handle. Now there are 4 bolts holding the shifter mechanism to the chassis. Remove those, and be sure to detach the wire holding the light bulb which illuminates the shifter at the base of the mount, and the entire assembly should remove fairly easily. The automatic shifter has one shift cable attached to it, and at the other end, the tranny. You need to detach it from the shifter side first, by removing the little circlip or hitch pin holding it into place. From the other side, since you've already cleaned out the engine bay, you can yank out the shift cable.
Incidentally, the gear indicator light (when you turn on the exterior lights) is still there. If you're creative, you can probably utilize this light as a shift indicator light, supercharger light, or use it to power a strobe light like the ricers. Hahaha... =) -Carl
You will notice that the rubber grommet that the single cable passes through is "extra" wide, and the mirror image of where the single cable passes through is solid. I simply took a large drill bit and drilled out the area. The manual shifter requires two shift cables. Pass these through, and leave 'em dangling in the engine bay for now. On the inside, you can now install the manual shift mechanism. It installs using the same attachment points as the other one, so it should be a straight bolt in affair. Then attach the shift cables in the same manner as before. Slap all the covers back on, screw the shift knob back on, and take a breather.