gday just started accumulating all the bits and pieces for a manual conversion and curious if many people have done it in the column shift utes mine was originally 3 on the tree but the previous owner converted it to an auto on the floor but i'm wanting to convert it to manual if anyone has done it would be great to see what your problems and encounters were so i'm well aware instead of having horrific surprises, i've done one manual conversion before and it would of been alot easier if i knew the things i do now and had a little insite to the problems that are common to come accross any help will be muchly appreciated
Cheers Paul.

the thrust bearing the pedal box
um making sure you remember to get all the bits then not lose any of them
other than that so long as your doing a factory swap with factory bits it's not to hard
used to work a wreckers that did vn and eb auto conversions to man in under a day if the boss needed $$$$

cheers man finger crossed it goes smoothly

get the crossmember too i think there different on the xf's
let us know how you get on and have beers handy for your m8ts

lol na i'll be doin it by myself don't reckon it'll be that hard, yeah manual cross member definately will be different but that comes with the box not sure if i have to drill more holes or not when i did the conversion on an r31 i had too so i guess time will tell really

not hard at all once u done u will see how simple it was , i donr heaps xe,s auto to man, hardest i found was holding flywheel still while u do up the boldts .

use an old thrust bearing from the crank to lock into the ring gear teeth and then wind it arond till it locks up on the dowell(mounted in the rear of the engine block that lines up with the gearbox) as long as one of these dowel pins are located, the old bearing, now new tool ,will lock up on it allowing you to tension properly by holding the crank in place