R+R Clutch on 91 Sunbird

I am going to spend the time and money to save my tired old sunbird from the junkyard and do the repair myself. I can't stand spending $600 for a clutch.

To R+ R the clutch do I have to completely remove the transmision? What ever happened to the inspection plate R+R method?

Any advice appreciated.

TIA

Reply to
ArchonOSX
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Yes the tranny has to come out. There is no such thing as doing an R&R via the inspection cover. Three things you will want to make sure and have/do while replacing the friction disk and pressure plate: be sure you have a clutch alignment tool, have the flywheel resurfaced, replace the throwout bearing. Skip any one of these and you will be slapping yourself upside the head not too long down the road.

Reply to
FBR

Thanks for the tips. I am planning to buy a kit that comes with all that (throw out bearing, disk, plate and alignment tool) and taking the flywheel to be machined. How can I tell if the flywheel has enough meat on it to be machined or if I need a new one. In other words where can I find the specs on the minimum thickness? It has never had the clutch replaced but has 130 K miles on it so.... I don't wan't to get it all back together and have it not engage until the pedel is 3/4 of the way up or something and only have it last another 30k miles. The car needs some repairs but makes a good around town car for my HS age son and I want to keep it running another few years.

Thanks for your input I haven't done this much work to a car since my

1970 Chevelle SS engine and tranny rebuild. I had an automatic but back then it seemed like the manuals on a rear wheel drive could have the clutch replaced without removing the tranny although I never did one of those.

Anyway, I have a Haynes guide to GM J cars coming from Amazon but I can progress now on taking out the tranny without the book until it comes middle of this week.

Reply to
ArchonOSX

"ArchonOSX" wrote

Talk to the machine shop that you have the flywheel machined at. Often, if they have to take quite a bit off, they will supply you with a shim that goes between the crank and flywheel. I'm not a big fan of these, we won't use them at our dealership, but there may be other guys here that have used them successfully.

It's hard to see how a clutch can be replaced without removing the trans as the input shaft from the trans goes through the disc into the end of the crankshaft. I do remember some medium duty trucks that you could remove the clutch out through the bottom of the bell housing, but you still had to take the trans out. The reason they were set up this way was that two motor mounts were attached to the rear of the bell housing, making it a big job to attempt to remove the bell housing.

Ian

Reply to
shiden_kai

Two that I can think of off the top of my head are;

Saab 900

Daewoo built Pontiac LeMans

Reply to
Neil Nelson

"Neil Nelson" wrote

Haven't run into either of those yet. Though I do understand that the Saab clutches are at the front of the car? Just have never worked on one of those, at least not a clutch repair.

Ian

Reply to
shiden_kai

The engine in the Saab 900 is mounted backwards (as you've probably seen), so transmission removal is a major chore. The Swedes countered for this by making the clutch extremely easy to service, all that's needed is a special tool to hold the pressure plate in its released position, the tool is easy enough to fabricate once you've seen one.

The Pontiac Lemans may have gone under a different name in Canada, perhaps the "Firefly?"

Reply to
Neil Nelson

"Neil Nelson" wrote

How do they deal with the input shaft? It must be removable?

No, I think that I've seen the Lemans cars, just never worked on them. I thought that the few that I actually had the hood open on, had an engine that looked very similar to the SOHC

2.0 engines in the Sunbirds. They looked like they had a fairly standard FWD engine/trans setup. What did they do to allow you to remove the clutch without removing the trans?

We do have Firefly's, but they were just Suzuki's.

Ian

Reply to
shiden_kai

Yup, there's a cover on the front of the transaxle which allows the input shaft to be withdrawn from the clutch assembly. An access cover on top of the bell housing allows removal of the clutch components.

That's the beast.

Similar to the Saab deal, there's a removable cover on the left end of the transaxle, if the factory tool isn't available, a simple pulling screw can be fabbed to remove the input shaft. IIRC, there are special clips (service tool) that hold the pressure plate in the released position, we welded up our own from angle iron (no one got hurt), and the clutch components drop out the bottom of the bell housing.

I find it amazing that such forethought was given in both cases to provide easy access to this type of service procedure. The Lemans transaxle didn't look all that difficult to R & R, but it's nice that one didn't have to add risk to the job messing with the rest of the driveline components.

Ahh... Those captive imports all blend together after a while. ;-)

Reply to
Neil Nelson

"Neil Nelson" wrote

Yes, some engineer was actually thinking about the poor flat raters that work on the vehicle. Not that it really matters, as they simply cut the time to reflect the "easier" method of doing the job. And I don't really believe that any engineer thinks about the flatraters....heh heh. Thanks for the info.

And it looks like it's all coming back around again with the Daewoo models that are going to be disguised as Chevy's. I noticed that one of the models even has a little 3 cylinder engine in the line-up. Probably a knockoff of the Suzuki engine.

Ian

Reply to
shiden_kai

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