[ncnative]

Just finished replacing my first the clutch, wife's 2001 V6 and wanted to post a little about my experience.
A co-worker, could not have done it without him, and myself did this in my garage with the car on jack stands...that sucked, the jack stands I had did not give us much room underneath to work. One of the worst things was having to crawl out for every little thing. We must have crawled out from under the car at least 100 times, not only is that a pain it is very time consuming.
I will skip the basic steps that are common sense or you can read about in any repair manual. I just want to address the things that gave us the most problems.

This job was not HARD but VERY aggravating. Again the car needed to be much higher, if you have access to a real lift, it will save you time and a lot of cursing.

The transmission may look small but it is quite heavy. It is more than one person should try to man-handle, especially when removing it. Using a jack or a jack adapter made to hold transmissions would be advisable!

1. First big problem.. Removing the transmission was a real pain. The input shaft on the transmission is quite long and the hole where the gear shift lever stub has to come out does not allow enough travel to just slide the tranny back and out.
We were able to remove it by twisting and lowering the rear of the tranny...this will not work when putting it back!!

2.On our first try at putting the tranny back in we could not get the it up high enough to align the input shaft with the clutch and pilot bearing, this was because the tranny shifter stub was hitting the frame. Tried jacking up the engine, and though I saw a very small amount of movement I do think it helped. Even loosened the motor mounts but still very minimum movement. We placed the jack on the bottom pulley at the front of the engine and only applied just enough pressure to move the engine, be careful as you might could bend the pulley shaft. Also I removed some metal from the frame between the two rear holes for the shifter dust cover screws. I do not recommend this but it definitely helped.***A small amount of grease on the pilot bearing stub and splines of the input shaft also helps***

3. While trying to reinstall the tranny, because we could not get the input shaft lined up, we knocked the clutch disc out of alignment. The disc is held in position by spring pressure, it does not take a huge amount of force to move it even when the pressure plate is bolted down. At first I thought we would have to pull the bell housing back off, but we made our own alignment tool using a Craftsman 5/8" deep socket and a 3" long piece of 5/8" dia. rod. The 5/8 rod will is a fairly close fit in the pilot bearing, the 5/8 socket is a perfect fit inside the clutch disc. The 5/8 rod is placed inside the 5/8 socket with about 1" sticking out. I put a small piece of black tape on the 5/8 rod to make it fit a little tighter in the socket to help keep it from pulling out. Then by putting the socket on a 12" extension we were able to use this tool to re-align the disc with the pilot without removing the bell housing. Stuck in the alignment tool that came with the clutch kit to verify they were correctly aligned. I would add an image of the tool but I do not know how? If anyone wants to see it I can email a photo. My email ncnative@gmail.com

4. Most of the bolts were VERY tight and some of them took both of us to break them loose, again if the car were higher we could have gotten in better positions for more leverage

5. Some of the bolts are hard to reach, you will definitely need a swivel adapter for your ratchet. You will also need some long extensions, 12" and 24"

6. We only had to loosen the two exhaust manifold to exhaust pipe bolts on the passenger side to remove the bell housing. This car does NOT have a factory exhaust system

7. The pilot bearing was another challenge. Tried two different tools made specially to remove pilot bearing, neither one helped. Found this on YouTube it WORKS!!!

YouTube - Pilot Bearing Removal ; Quick, Clean, and easy!

YouTube - Pilot Bearing Removal ; Quick, Clean, and easy!

Takes a lot of paper. I used newspaper because it was handy.
Instead of a socket I used a piece of 5/8" aluminum rod, that is how I knew the 5/8 rod was a close fit when we need to make the alignment tool.

8. Finally the starter gave me fits. Removal was no problem but for some reason I never discovered when trying to re-install it the starter wires kept binding against the frame to the point that it would not line up. Just kept screwing with it (2 HOURS), eventually it went in.

9. Last. I could find no info about adjusting the clutch pedal/cable once the new clutch was in. The Haynes manual did not address this or at least I could not find it. Thanks to this forum, I learned that all you have to do is grab the clutch pedal, pull it up as far as possible and it will reset itself to the correct position!

10. Cost
$170.00 for the clutch kit which included disc, pressure plate, pilot bearing, throw-out bearing & alignment tool
$55.00 Clutch fork & pivot stud
$30.00 re-surface flywheel
$25.00 Haynes manual
Cursing and frustration....priceless!

[Mr. Red Pony]

Grease and a brass drift is quicker than making wet paper and breaking a perfectly good bit driver..

Trans is a pita though. Especially if you have to bend you exhaust out of the way..

[ncnative]

I knew the grease trick was an option but never tried it. My thinking was that since the drift/punch would have to have some clearance the grease squirting out around it would be a lot more messy than water. I did get water spray with every whack? The clean up was very easy with the water, not so sure how easy it would have been with grease? Also practically everyone has paper and water available.

[Mr. Red Pony]

Very tight fit if you do it the grease way. I know a guy the only works on 5.0s and he made a steel drift the exact size of the imput shaft to use one pilot bearing with grease. Plus water rusts things.

[SALEEN961]

I tried both pilot bearing tricks when removing mine, but it was just way to stuck. After a good 10 mintues of me and my friend taking turns using a slide hammer it finally came out. I offered my friend a free lunch if he got it out, and right after he gave up it came out on my first hit, he was pissed lol.