NOTE : Please note that I no longer own this Rover 800, and may not be able to help with technical queries anymore for this vehicle. These pages are here for information only.

Wiring Modifications for Automatic to Manual conversion

The modifications that are needed when you convert your 827 from an Automatic to a manual are very easy to do. Hopefully this page will give you more of a clue.

Firstly the auto box ECU can be completely removed from under the passenger seat. It is no longer needed and will actually make the other steps easier to do with the ECU removed. It will also stop your S4 light from flashing away on your dashboard. Don't refit the passenger seat quite yet. You will need to be back under there for some wiring.

Now then, under the bonnet. I found the easiest way to connect up the neutral and reverse switches and route their wires through to the inside of the car was to use the original auto box wiring. There should be four wires which used to go to your solenoids. These can now be used as the four wires which connect to your neutral and reverse switches. These wires should be accessible from inside the car at the plug which you disconnected from your auto box ECU. Make sure that when you connect the wires you preserve their pairs. At this point it doesn't matter which solenoid plug you connect to which switch (just make sure the pairs are kept together).

That should be it for under the bonnet. Now back to the passenger seat. The plug that used to connect to your auto ECU should be in two parts. It's the smaller of the two halves that we are interested in. It should look something like this.

  1   2       3 4
-------------------
| O O O     O O O |
| O O O O O O O O |
-------------------
      5

I have labelled the pins that we are interested in and their colors should be as follows.

1. Brown/Green
2. White
3. Blue/Yellow
4. Green/White
5. Blue/Red

When I did this I removed the wires from the plug completely and fitted bullet style connectors on the ends of the wires.

• Wire 1 and Wire 5 need removing and connecting together and a single bullet fitting to the end.
• Wire 2 needs removing and a single bullet fitting to the end.
• Wire 3 needs removing and a single bullet fitting to the end.
• Wire 4 needs removing and a single bullet fitting to the end.

You should now be at the stage where you can make four wires which will reach from under the passenger seat to the centre console area. Fit these wires to the four bullets you have prepared. Wires 3 and 4 should be kept as a pair and wires 2 and 1/5 should be the second pair.

You should be left with something that looks a little like this

At this point you could get your multimeter out and use the continuity checker to find out which pairs are the neutral switch and which are the reverse switch. Just check for continuity between the two wires of the pair. If you do this, label the pairs now. If not it doesn't matter. If you get the pairs wrong, it just means that when you finish, your reverse lights will come on in neutral. It would simply be a matter of swapping the pairs round.

OK, now to the other end of the wires. Find the big wide connector block which used to connect to your shift lever. It should look something like this.

      1
---------------------
| O O O O O O O O O |
| O O O O   O O O O |
---------------------
  2 3 4 5   6

Again I have labelled the pins that we are interested in and their colors should be as follows.

1. Green
2. Red/White
3. Red/White
4. Green/Yellow
5. Green/Brown
6. Purple/Green

To bypass the start only in park feature of the automatic, you will need to connect the two red/white wires together. Wires 2 and 3. A simple scotch lock works wonders here.

The other four wires should be removed and bulleted ready to plug into the ends of the four wires coming from your auto box ecu plug which you prepared earlier.

Connect the reverse light pair (don't worry if you don't have a multimeter and don't know which pair is which, just choose one for now) to wires 4 and 5 (Doesn't matter which way round).

Connect the neutral pair (again don't worry if you don't know which one is which) to wires 1 and 6.

You should be staring at something like this now.

That's it, Job is done. Check that your reverse lights come on properly. If not, chances are you got the pairs the wrong way round. Swap the over. To check the neutral switch is working, your revs should rise slightly when you put the car in gear, and drop down when in neutral.

The only other thing that I haven't done here is to trip the cruise control off (if fitted) when the car goes into neutral. Not a major headache, but would probably involve a relay. I didn't think this was too bad to leave out. It just means that your engine revs would race up if you car slipped into neutral while the cruise was on.

Hope all this helps