Looking Inside EAG’s 2020 Supra Transmission Swap Project (Part 2)

It has been some time since the tuning company European Auto Group (EAG) came up with the idea to astonish the automotive world by delivering the first in the world manual 2020 Toyota Supra. The thing is that the factory-built Supra comes with the automatic transmission only, disappointing admirers of the classic Supra design with a gear stick. But it seems like a manual 2020 Supra is going to happen after all, as the EAG team has finally integrated a 6-speed manual transmission in the Supra design. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at all stages of the transmission swap process with the help of videos from EAG’s youtube channel. Here is the link for Part 1.

It’s nice to know that Go4trans team has also contributed to this promising project, as we’ve been an intermediary between Art Bartosik, the head of EAG, and our UK partners from Sussex Auto Parts and Hydra-Test, who by combined efforts managed to supply a long-awaited transmission unit (gs6-45dz) to the EAG facility in Texas.

Art is happy to see a manual transmission for his project

As soon as Art and his colleagues received a delivery package and made sure that the starter was located on the bottom (that’s actually one of the reasons why EAG had to get the transmission assembled in Europe), Art said that it would certainly work out.

In the 1-st video, the EAG team had to take the Supra’s interior apart and match up all the parts. But before that Art connected the scanner to the car and checked it for error codes to deal with all possible issues before tearing the car apart and avoid possible issues during the actual transmission swap. After this preventative measure, they put the car on the lift and started tearing it apart. When it came to pulling out the transmission unit, ATF suddenly started pouring on the ground, but guys put the bucket under it. When they finally removed the gear shifting unit from Supra, Art compared it to the recently received manual unit and found out that the manual ZF transmission was a bit shorter than the automatic.

Manual vs. Automatic

To deal with this issue, Art decided to make spacers and longer bolts to compensate the difference. It was also decided to use the mounting bracket from the automatic. The next practical step was to remove the torque converter and to line up the flywheel to mount the gearbox and see how it fitted. It helped EAG to make necessary measurements and produce proper spacers.

In the 2-nd video, it became possible for the EAG team to start mounting some of the shift linkages, as they finally received the shifter assembly from BMW. Art had to cut out the hole in the panel to place the shifter boot in the right place, center the linkage, and see how far it should be modified to match up to the cabin. Art was quote nervous during this delicate procedure, as he had to be very precise in order not to damage anything. Fortunately, it worked out pretty well. After the shift linkages were installed, they put the car off the lift to see if it was necessary to make any adjustments. Fortunately, there were no problems as Art was going through all the gears.

To modify the drive shaft, which turned out to be a bit short in the manual transmission, EAG specialists took the guibo disc from the automatic transmission and adjusted it to the manual unit to make necessary measurements. As a result, EAG extended the driveshaft about 3 inches to make it fit. And it actually looks like an original OEM part. They test fitted the part and it looked promising.

Art removes the guibo disc from the automatic transmission

In the next video, Art showed an extended transmission mount used in a 335 BMW model, which helped to solve the problem with the length differences and fitted in perfectly well for the manual Supra.

Then it was the time to the get inside the Supra’s interior and to remove the brake pedal assembly in order to test fit the clutch box assembly. However, after removing the brake pedal, they found out that there was no mounting point for the clutch pedal, thus the EAG team came up with the idea to use a pedal box from some BMW model that had to do the job. After doing some modifications and adjustments tricks, the 2020 Supra got the clutch pedal mounted.

Check out the final episode of the 2020 Supra transmission swap project

Before performing a final installation of the transmission unit and all related parts, EAG tech specialists test fitted all parts and everything seemed OK, but later it turned out that the flywheel didn’t fit in. To fix the issue Art had to perform some measurements and to do some adjustments to the dowel pin and the hole of the flywheel. When the flywheel finally found its place into the mounting location, Art and his colleagues proceeded with the clutch assembly installation. Finally, it was necessary to mount the transmission and to try it in action. Fortunately, tremendous efforts of the EAG team were not in vain and they’ve got the 2020 manual Toyota Supra running. This unique car has already reached SEMA 2019.

Manual Supra at the SEMA Show

Now owners of a factory-built 2020 Toyota Supra equipped can get a transmission swap service from European Auto Group. But should certainly hurry up with an order, as EAG plans to perform only 16 transmission conversions in 2020, each costing a total of $12,000 with a $6,000 upfront deposit.

As for the future, it seems like the 2020Toyota Supra won’t be the last in the list of EAG transmission swap projects, as the company considers installing a gear stick in the Chevrolet C8 Corvette.