legacycentral bbs

Go buy yourself socket based allen keys you don't already have one.

That bolt can be a major pain to remove!

It's definitely right-hand threaded.

You could try the old tricks like heating it up with a torch or something, I suppose...

You've sprayed lots and lots of PB Blaster all over it, right?

Matt, Phil, and I did the pressure plate bolt thing but we had the engine and transmission out of the car. We actually used an impact wrench.

Ok, first I drilled a hole in the transmission right on the side of the starter motor hole. This allowed me to use a socket wrench and extension to take the pressure plate bolts off. Now of course the tranny could be dropped. -- this was a great mod I came up with, anyone doing a clutch job should drill a hole in their tranny here if their allen head plug is stuck.

Later I found out that that plug HAS to come out in order to get the throw out bearing out. Well at this point it was 100% stripped, it was never gonna come out with that allen head socket any more. I took a dremel tool to it and totally ground away the "washer" or surface of the plug. With the surface gone the tension that the plug had been tightened against was gone and it came right out just screwing it with my hand.

Tomorrow morning I can get the flywheel ground and then put it all back together.

Nice improvisation. Any chance you could take a picture of the hole you drilled?

So it's not possible to leave the plug in and separate the fork from its ball joint in order to get the throwout bearing off?

Here's a pic of the hole I drilled:

And the plug that I cut off and then re-welded a washer and a bolt to:


And yes you have to take out that plug to get the throw out bearing off. There is no "ball joint" that the clutch fork pivots on (remember this clutch fork pulls instead of pushes like most), it pivots on a rod thats behind that plug, you HAVE to remove it.

Neat!

Are you going to plug the hole with something, or just leave it?

Oh, right, of course the ball-and-socket is replaced by the rod.

I'll just leave the hole. The starter motor blocks half of it I believe.

Cool.

Will the starter fit with that head on the rod plug?

Yes it fits. The only things I have left to install now are the front wheels, downpipe, slave cylinder, and put fluid in the tranny.

How much fluid do I need for the tranny? What is it like 80W90 gear oil?

If you just drained, it'll probably take like 3..... something.

The owner's manual calls for 75w90.....however I'm running 80w90....

Is there a plug you remove and it leaks out once you reach that limit, or should I just fill 3.something? I assume you just fill in the dipstick hole of the tranny.

I'd just put 2.5 in, and then check the level, and add accordingly.

yes you add through the dipstick hole.

I have an amazing story.

We had almost everything together and one of the last things I was doing was putting back on the heat shield over the turbo. I was reaching over doing one of the screws and I dropped it. I heard it hit metal and it didn't make it to the ground. I stand on something and look over, and I realize the bolt I was doing was located DIRECTLY above the dip stick for the tranny (and I had the dip stick out)! I looked all around but I couldn't see it any where in the engine bay on the tranny or anything. I wasn't sure if it had fallen in the tranny or not.

We had to go to autozone to get some gear oil, so I also looked for a skinny magnet on a stick I could poke down the dipstick hole and see if anything came up. They didn't have one for sale at autozone but one of the employees said "I've got something for ya" and he took us back to his personal car and loaned us a skinny magnet he had!

So we get home and stick the thing down the dipstick hole, multiple times and moved it all around, but it brought up nothing. I thought there is one last thing I can try. I got under the car and pulled the drain plug and stuck my finger around to see if I felt anything. All the sudden I felt it! It amazed me actually, I thought what were the chances that it ACTUALLY fell in the tranny ya know. Anyway when I felt it I accidentally pushed it farther away, but I used the magnet device through the drain plug hole and I pulled it out!

Absolutely amazing it WAS actually there and we found it. If we would have just ran the car it probably would have gotten caught up in some gears and blown the tranny up.

The clutch job is done! It works great for him! Oh I forgot one more thing happened, we got the car all together and put the negative battery cable on. It made a clicking sound and then after a minute smoke started coming from the starter motor! Ok, so we pulled off the starter motor and took it to autozone. They tested it and it did test bad. The gear would throw out but it wouldn't spin. Well we didn't get a new one cause my brother was broke now (we were just gonna pull one from a junk yard). We went home and then pulled the old starter motor apart to try and figure out what went wrong (cause it worked fine when we STARTED the clutch job). We found a terminal inside it that had been twisted and was making contact where it shouldn't because I had tightened the positive starter nut too tight! So we pulled that piece out, did some banging and twisting, and put it all back together and back in the car. Fixed! Works great.

Glad you got things taken care of. That is a pretty amazing story.

That's crazy! Swish!