03 Civic LX Clutch Replacement

=============================================

If he's hooked on DIY, he should just change the MTF (get ti at Honda dealer) and see if it solves his 'problem'. He should also bleed the clutch while he bleeds the brakes (overdue). A Civic of that age shouldn't have any troubles unless he's been using it to pull tractors out of the mud :-(

'Curly'

Replace the clutch without removing the transmission? Dunno... the only one I've done on a FWD car was on my son's Acura. The tranny had to rotate about

30 degrees when it went into place so the tranny jack was useless. I actually pulled a muscle in my face trying to get it in position and seated. Really - it hurt for days.

It may seem odd, but he should try a bottle of injector cleaner and give it a tankful to see if it helps. Dirty injectors often show up at low rpms and high load - the conditions that he complains about. It's cheap, easy, and can't hurt. I've had pretty good results.

Mike

highly unlikely that it's the clutch at that mileage. investigate for oil leaks. iirc, there was a similar clutch problem reported here a while ago and it was a broken friction plate spring, but at much higher mileage. that kind of fault is uncommon though. as curly says, eliminate all the simple stuff first.

if replacement /is/ necessary, it's not that easy - need at least to have sufficient room to fit the alignment dowel for the friction disk before bolting down the pressure plate - and you really need to have the transmission out of the way to do that properly. trust me on this - you don't want to try mating a transmission up to a misaligned clutch. unless he has some experience, i don't think this is a first time amateur job. at least go to a junk yard and mess about with with some scrap vehicles first to get an idea of what's involved. but if learning is not the objective, if you do that and price the time, it's probably cheaper to pay a shop to do it.

"tww" wrote in news:3cZeh.59592$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe15.lga:

Chatter is usually due to heat checking on the flywheel, or a bent friction disc, both caused by abuse. If he's been particularly brutal with the clutch (drag racing, showing off), it's possible to badly damage those parts very quickly.

Chatter can also result from oil on the friction disc, something that's highly unlikely at this car's age.

Tranny HAS to come off. Also the lower balljoints and the driveshafts. It's a very big job to do in your driveway without a hoist.

Then let him do it, on one condition: It's HIS responsibility to pay for bent input shafts ($$$$), and HIS responsibility to get it to a garage when he can't get the splines to line up after trying all night.

He'll pay close to $1,000 at a dealer, including parts, taxes, and flywheel resurfacing (if they'll do that instead of replacing the flywheel).

It's worth paying $90 to have the dealer properly diagnose this "chatter", to make sure it's not something that will go unsolved after the expenditure of ten times that amount.

That's an exaggeration, TeGGeR. Shoot, with moderate experience and very careful use of the clutch alignment tool before reassembly I got my son's tranny in place in about an hour or so. Of course, most of that time was spent wrestling with an 80 pound irregularly shaped freezing hunk of metal inches from my chest (remember, it mustn't put any appreciable weight on the input shaft so the only way to rest is to take it completely back down) while trying blindly to get it to line up within less than a mm in two dimensions and in two axis... but since I didn't have nightmares about it later it couldn't have been that bad, right?

Appreciate the info from all. I have this before on a 69 Vette on jackstands. And, you had to remove the transmission. Frankly, I don't think he has the expertise despite training on motorcycle repair. I will have to drive the car myself to see exactly what the problem is -- and I hope it is not abuse. Heck -- why race a 115 hp Civic.