Clutch job on '94 Integra

Not really, but I'd recommend having the factory service manual handy and disconnecting the battery before starting.. Keep a good assortment of wood around. You may need it to support things..

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We got the tranny off last night, and I'd missed the diagnosis by a bit. The pilot bearing was fine, but one of the springs on the disk had fretted its way out of the cage that held it and was jamming against the pressure plate, snagging on the fingers. Now, if we can get the pilot bearing out we will be ready to reassemble....

A couple points for future reference. The tranny has to rotate top toward back maybe 30 degrees to clear the rear cross-member when it comes out. That pretty much precludes the use of a transmission jack, but the tranny only weighs about 80 lbs so that wasn't a big deal. At the same time it solves another problem - the shift linkage doesn't come apart readily at the tranny end, but disconnects from the shifter by a bolt above the exhaust. Once disconnected there really isn't proper room to drop the torque tube of the linkage past the exhaust hanger. We got it by prying and using incantations, but it is easier to let it be until the tranny is rotated and the torque tube is pulled forward enough to clear the hanger. It looked like we were going to bind when we separated the tranny from the engine, but in retrospect it would have cleared. The separation only has to be about 3/8 inch to clear the locator sleeves.

Tonight: the reinstallation.

Mike

"Michael Pardee" wrote in news:nsWdnZ_ns8OjjCDenZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@sedona.net:

Somebody's got to learn to be gentler and smoother on the clutch, then.

Rent a small slide hammer, use with a hook attachment.

"Michael Pardee" wrote in news:nsWdnZ_ns8OjjCDenZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@sedona.net:

I read a hint in Pop Mechanics about packing the pilot bearing with grease,then pounding a close-fitting dowel in the center,and hydraulic pressure forces the bearing out;never tried it myself,though.

We tried that with the alignment tool, gripping it with vise-grips. I think I had too many air bubbles caught in the grease. D'oh!

Mike

Moot point - he recently bought the car (with 130K miles on it) from somebody who had no idea how to operate the car. He was the second owner, and fortunately had it too short a time to really mess it up. When we changed the timing belt - a tad overdue, no? - I couldn't get over how clean the cylinder head is... wipe off the oil and it could pass for brand new. The guy didn't even know he had a torn CV boot and had no idea what one is. He bought the car with the expectation of putting a lot of sweat equity into it, and it is a fine car.

The disc was down to the rivets also, to give you an idea of how the car was driven. My son accelerates moderately hard, but shifts gently.

Done and broken. Rob actually rented a *large* slide hammer from AutoZone, but the hooks didn't quite fit through the bearing. He tried it with a single hook and a wooden shim, but it popped out without moving the bearing a bit. Dad to the rescue! I rented a puller from Checker that had a separate spreader screw and puller nut. We managed to break one of the hooks off the brand new puller.

Eventually we pulled the flywheel off and drove it out the backside. It seems there is a lip, and the bearing can't come out the front! Rob found the reference for pulling the flywheel to remove the bearing in a different part of the Helm manual. After a while we decided it was better to laugh about it than cry, which marks it as a hassle instead of a tragedy.

Anyway, we got the tranny back on a few minutes ago. Also for reference, it is very tempting to start with the tranny rotated quite a lot, just because it has to be rotated some to get past the cross-member and somehow it fits the hands better when it is rotated almost 90 degrees. Unfortunately, the thermostat housing gets in the way unless the tranny is rotated only enough to get past the cross-member and then turned right side up. About an hour and a half of struggling and making feral sounds ("golly gee whiz" was one of them, I'm sure) and it was done. Now I remember why I hate replacing clutches.

Mike

"Michael Pardee" wrote in news:7PCdnej3XPm4dCDenZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@sedona.net:

Suddenly I don't miss not having done mine myself... :)

Another update... we had been doing the shift linkage the hard way, for sure. Lacking enough detail in the manual, we didn't see how to unfasten the shifter torque tube from the transmission. That made a lot of things very unwieldy and it came to a head after the transmission finally went on.

The attachment is simple enough, but it was obscured when I first looked at it. The dust boot pushes back toward the tranny to reveal what initially looked like a crimped ring, but that is actually a very flimsy safety clip with a dimple. The dimple keeps it on the tension pin that really holds the linkage together and the clip easily slides toward the tranny to reveal the pin. The thing to do is to hit the pin with penetrant while rounding up the correct tools, because (working with an air hammer) it took more pounding to get the pin to start moving than to push it through. The pin pushes out from the bottom and pushes in from the bottom, so access is as nice as I could want. If I'd been smarter I would have started the pin in the torque tube before putting it back in place, though. Getting it to nose through to the inside would have helped align the hole, too.

Mike