on a motor w/ 175k miles, weird noises could be almost anything.
and WHY are you going to invest all this money on a car w/ that much miles anyway?
i would guess that you would want to rebuild the motor first, or at least recondition everything before going through a auto to manual tranny swap, which would also confuse the ecu, and etc.
also you don't even have your license???
is this a TL 6 speed?
This is a complete waste of time.