April 9, 2006 - Starting the Drivetrain Install
(2)
Now that we were sure the flywheel holes would line up we put the
flywheel back up against the crank and turned the flywheel until the
holes lined up. We put all 8 bolts in, and tightened them to
the spec in the shop manual. Here's a picture of the flywheel installed.
Before fitting the pressure plate up against the flywheel we dropped
the clutch disc into the pressure plate and grabbed our alignment
tool. We put the alignment tool into the clutch disc and
slid the assembly carefully into place so that the alignment
tool was in the pilot bearing and the dowels took enough of the weight that we felt
confident we could let go and it wouldn't fall. We put the new
pressure plate to flywheel bolts in and starting tightening in a
crisscross pattern. Eventually the pressure plate was pulled
into positioned and we finished the install by tightening the bolts
to the spec in the shop manual. Unfortunately, we weren't able to check the
run out because the fuel system was apart, and the starter uses the
transmission as a mounting point, so we didn't have a good way of
spinning the crank. Hopefully this won't come back to bite us
in the ass later on, we just took it for granted that bolts pulled
everything flush against the mating surfaces. I guess we'll
find out for sure when we go to start the car for the first time.
Here's a picture of the pressure plate installed.
Back when we took the transmission out we had to cut a couple of
tabs off of the bell housing. At the time we didn't cut them
flush with the bell housing we just hacked enough off to get the
transmission out. As I was looking at the transmission before
we installed it i noticed that there was little more material to
remove. I looked for the cut-off wheel and started hacking
away. Here's the results of my efforts.
After I was finished cutting we slid the transmission under the
car and put the clutch fork and throwout bearing in place.
The transmission was sitting on the tranny jack and we were ready
to hoist it into position. Our plan was to raise the
transmission and once it was at the right height install the new
polyurethane mount. Everything went well until we tried to
install the mount. There are two holes on the top of the mount
and they didn't lineup with the holes on the transmission. We
could get one bolt in but the other was off by just enough to keep
us from putting the second bolt in. We felt that we could
grind to hole into a slot and then it would probably fit. It
took a solid 20 minutes of grinding but we finally go it.
Installing the rest of the mount was straight forward, it went on
without a problem. One of the most frustrating parts of
installing these trannies is getting the input shaft to slide into
the pilot bearing. It takes some finesse to get it in.
Our method consists of raising the transmission jack, and sliding
the transmission forward, looking between the clutch and the bell
housing to see where we need to go and then repeating. It's
not an exact science and it takes some patience but it works.
When the input shaft was in place we attempted to get the rear
tranny mount fastened to the car. The hardest part was getting
the holes on the mount to line up with the holes on the car.
We used a jack to raise the transmission and then pushed, pulled,
and wiggled the transmission until they lined up. I had to
leave early, but Dad stayed a few minutes after I left and inserted
all but the top 2 bell housing to block bolts.
