Clutch back in

Well, after lots of swearing, the clutch is back in and the bellhousing is back on. I started by borrowing a bearing puller from BG to remove the pilot bearing. I first tried the old "fill the bearing pocket with grease" trick, but it didn't work. Come to think of it, the grease trick has never worked for me. It ends up making a huge mess and the bearing never moves. The bearing was in there pretty good and it took a lot of work with the puller to remove it.

I put the new bearing in place and bolted the flywheel back on, lining up the timing mark. I didn't have a clutch alignment tool, but I had a plan. First, I put the friction disc and pressure plate on and only made the bolts finger tight. I had a 10mm deep socket that fit almost perfectly in the pilot bearing so I used it with an extension as a center. Then I aligned the disc by sight to get close. Once it was close, I put the bellhousing back on to use the actual input shaft for final alignment. I carefully, remove the bellhousing again and torqued down the pressure plate bolts.



With the clutch secure, I put new o-rings on the bellhousing and put it back on the car. What a PITA! It came off much easier than it went back on. It was a struggle so I decided to call it a night. The rest of the assembly will need to wait for another day.