Installing a Manual Transmission in the Infiniti Q60 Red Sport
Nowadays, it comes as no surprise that sophisticated
automatic transmissions push out classic manual transmission even from sports
car segment, and the Infiniti Q60 Red Sport 400 is one more example of this
automation trend. But the group of enthusiasts from Concept Z Performance (CZP)
decided to add to the Q60 a key element of the classic sports car – a manual
gear stick.
First of all, the CZP team had to examine the
Q60 powertrain and make necessary measurements. Fortunately, the VR engine
architecture has been around for a number of years in a number of cars, and
shares a lot of elements with the VQ-series of engines, which dates back to 1994.
Therefore, the team was able to use a lot of Nissan spare parts to perform the
conversion operation. At this stage, they decided that the Nissan 370Z’s manual
gearbox will be the best variant for the transmission swap task.
Despite the fact that the Q60 is stuffed with
complex electronics, CZP experts made some magic and now the Q60 can be shifted
manually. It didn’t come easy as they had to find solutions for a wide range of
challenging tasks (from spacing accuracy to how to ECU/TCM issues).
Now this Q60 looks and drives as if it were
developed and produced by Nissan engineers. Thanks to proper adjustment of the bell
housing to position the crank sensor accurately, some wiring customization,
specially designed transmission support, and several 3D printed internal
elements, the manual Infiniti Q60 became a reality.
Take a look inside the
manual Infiniti Q60 Red Sport
However, guys from CZP do not plan to remain
complacent and want to introduce some new features for this car, such as an LSD
and a custom final drive. At the same time, there is one little problem: the
system throws an error message on the dashboard “Key System Error”, which means
that the remote car start doesn’t work, but it has no negative impact on
operational capacities of the car.
Check out the 1-st manual Infiniti Q60
Moreover, the CZP team considers performing this kind of swap services on other cars (including the Q50) and maybe include this operation in its portfolio of services and/or provide the conversion kit. The Q60 conversion price is estimated approximately at $5700 (in parts), but more exact price will be determined after several swap operations, as all processes are optimized and costs of labor and of spare parts are specified.
