Gday Ozdatters,

I will start this post by saying that I have been playing with 5 speed boxes into Stanzas for the past few months so all the dimensions and info is spot on. This post is about putting a 5 speed box into a manual Stanza. I have no experience with automatic Stanzas.

The two most commonly used conversion are the 5 speed dogleg Stanza box from a Stanza SSS and the R30 'Stumpy' gearbox.

LENGTHS
About 4 months ago I purchased a 5 speed dogleg box which I thought was a SSS Stanza box. I saw the 63A# on the side but little did I know this was cast onto both the 180b SSS and Stanza SSS box. The Stanza SSS box is shorter than the 180b SSS box however the R30 is the same lengths the SSS Stanza 5 speed. The measurements are below.

SSS Stanza Dogleg 5 Speed is 660mm
R30 Stumpy 5 Speed is 660mm
180B SSS 5 Speed is 780mm (this is obviously referred to as the long box and it is the same length as Datsun Z boxes and bluebird boxes)

The 'long boxes' can be fitted to a Stanza as the bell housings all match up however the tailshaft for the manual Stanza will need to be shortened and balanced.

CROSS MEMBERS
The cross members between the auto, SSS manuals and 4 speed manual Stanzas are different. I currently have a 5 speed Stumpy box in my Stanza and we had to fabricate a cross member. People talk about sourcing auto cross members or bluebird cross members and turning them backwards and flipping the upside down and they bolt straight up! My advice is to just get some 40mm RHS, some 4mm thick angle bar and a ruler then you can make your own cross member. Failing that I'm pretty sure Baz from Datsport can hook you up with a cross member/adaptor plates that will fit.

STRENGTH
I finally chose to source a Stumpy R30 Box not only for the normal shift pattern but for the strength. The R30 Stumpy is from the L24 six cylinder skyline and therefore it stands to reason that it is stronger than the Dogleg SSS Stanza box. The stumpy box is more commonly used in the rally Stanzas than the SSS Dogleg box as well. I'm sure that both the boxes are strong enough for the road however if you drive like I do then i thought a stronger box wouldn't hurt.

PRICES
A well sorted Stumpy box would range from $300-400

A well sorted SSS Dogleg box would range from $100-250

PHOTOS

Stumpy on Right and 4 Speed on Left


Stumpy


4 Speed Original


Stumpy Length


Closest is 4 Speed


Stumpy Bell Housing after a clean

Awesome man, thanks for the info.
Are you running a stock standard L16 in your stanza with this Stumpy R30 box?

Cheers,

Tim

top info, thanks for sharing

_________________
Redtop SR20DET into a 1980 Stanza
4 Door 720
Blog

Yeh Tim I am mate. Just got an A87 head and, extractors just need the bottom end of an L20 and some twin webers then I am in business.

Will a sss gearbox x member fit the long box into a stanza? how to fit the long boxes