to change to manual tranny, what you do is: just before you start a race there a chance to select either yes or no(yes being the choice on the right and no being on the left, also no has more characters than yes) what this is asking is if you want shifting assistance(do you want automatic?) select no and you have a manual tranny. to find the mail go into your garage and youll see a button that says "connection net" that is the messages and there are 3 different section in there, make sure to go over every one and if it asks a question always pick yes, because its asking you if you will accept the level bosses challenge, if you pick no your screwed.