Replacing motor with auto tranny
 

I posted a few weeks back about my daughter's mini with low compression. I've been working on selling it, but am starting to have second thoughts and am thinking about buying a used motor on ebay - there seem to be some decent fairly low mileage motors to be had for around $1500. I'd like to do the swap myself, but am curious as to how hard it is. I've done my share of work on many cars over the years, including engine swaps, but never on a car this complex, or with an auto. Is there any major different in procedure with the auto? Anything to be particularly concerned about? From what I can tell, there is no different in the motor itself.

Ian

Correct, no difference in the motor itself between manual and auto, and since it's a straight swap, no problems with the correct mounts or sensors.

It's a lot less scary once you start to get into it, just Bag-N-Tag everything, with lots of pictures and wiring tags with tape and it's actually petty straight forward.

Just remember, one bit at a time, makes it a lot less confusing and stressful.
And pick up a Bentley Manual, it's indispensable for jobs like this.

The swap videos I seen remove the engine and transmission as a single unit, so I guess I would have to remove the transmission from the old engine and put it back on the new one. My main challenge is that I don't have the garage space to do the job indoors, so would have to do it outside. That would mean doing it in a single weekend in my driveway. I think we might just have to part ways with the car, sad.

Ian

You might look into a local community garage. Sometimes you can find a garage that lets you rent a bay and use their lift (and sometimes tools) to work on your car. If you have a buddy to help and a good garage and lift, I feel like you could do that job in a weekend (and maybe call in sick on monday to rest)

Nothing wrong with leaving it in the driveway to work on. I did it, I went a little overboard and started replacing or powered coating everything so it was in the driveway a little longer. I just covered to with a car cover.

I do my work in the driveway also...use a car cover