Volvo 850 m56 swap/diy for US based owners

[Moneypit850]

Good morning everyone! I have recently finished an m56 swap in the US. For the T5s we never got a manual and very few R were manual as well. We have autos galore down here in Florida so very hard to find parts. This post will hopefully be helpful for anyone doing a swap now that parts from forums 15 years ago are impossible to find a long with fixes for finding OEM 850 manual parts.

Pedal boxes- these are very hard to find, I did manage to get one for cheap somehow, these would hold a clutch pedal but the return spring wouldn't have a place to sit which is very unfortunate, along with the CPS but that's not as important from what I've read and have experienced. Try and find one of them OEM if you can, replicating it would be difficult, but not impossible.

Shifter/shifter assembly- the 850 is different then the late gen v70s, 2000+, not sure on 1999 below but very different interiors so this is a must for an OEM part to find, wish I found a way to get something else to work but tried and failed.

Shifter cables- This is the big one, I've seen OEM ones for 200+, absolutely ridiculous. I had a set but they are very poorly designed and snapped on me. I have found the that v70 2000+ cables can be made to work, it's a lot but I will include photos in a later post. If you have any fabrication skills or want to do its very possible, these cables are better designed in my opinion. If you do need to do this you must, 1. Cut the gear shifter cable holders, 2. Sand/file/grind down the ball ends on the shifter to fit the cables, 3. Cut and weld the tranny side bracket to properly space the v70 cables throw length. With enough patience it is possible.

Like many before me said, do the rear main seal while you're there along with get a new slave cylinder, even if it looks fresh, mine went while bleeding the system. Rock auto has one for cheap and there not horrible expensive off of fcp euro.

For a clutch on the turbo models lots of reading around lead me to the clutch and pressure plate the ViVA makes for the type r. This uses sachs old pressure plate from the OEM type r kits but the tooling was bought when sachs stopped making the kit for Volvo. The clutch is a LUK, everything looks great and fits amazing but I have to put many miles on the car yet so we'll see. It also still swedish built!

Final big point! You do not need to pull the motor when doing this, just drop the tranny and lift in the new one. Takes only a few hours if you've done it before. A tranny Jack or a floor jack will work perfect for getting it in place. You may need a cherry picker to get the motor back in place after this is done to fit the subframe correctly.

If anyone has any other questions feel free to ask!