Changing your clutch, pay the hell attention.

[horse-eater]

Alright guys, I promised this a while ago, but I am in Iraq and really haven't had time to do this... so eat it....


This is a general walkthrough. I may forget stuff since it has been a while since last time I did it.

What you will need:

1: A garage with a lift, or a few brave hardasses able to do it in a driveway.
2: Metric wrenches/ratchet and sockets. Flathead/phillips screwdrivers. Hammer, split fork, impact gun
3: Gearbox oil.
4: A new clutch
5: Patience
6: New cotter pins for your wheel hub nuts
7: Transmission jack, and a tower jack.
8: Torque wrench, mitsu's torque specs


What you will do.

1: Put your car on a lift, I like to do everything with the car slightly elevated because it saves your back, and gives you better leverage on a few hard to reach bolts.

2: Make sure you have everything out of your car so you dont have to go up/down/up/down/up/down with the lift...like i sometimes do. There will be a few raise/lowers of the car, but it is because I remove stuff in 'phases' as to not forget anything.

3:Open your hood, D/C the battery. Remove the battery, battery tray, and metal battery tray holder form car. Put somewhere else. Remove intake entirely from car. Put somewhere else. D/C linkage from tranny, pull it up out of the way where it wont get snagged. D/C the clutch fluid line from the tranny, cap it off so you dont get air in your master-cylinder. Move it so it wont get snagged. There is a little plug directly below the TB on the transmission, D/C it and move it aside (dont be like me and not know it was there until you ripped it out with your 400lb transmission.) I might be forgetting something, so make sure you have everything detached from the top of the tranny.

4: Remove front tires. Move out of the way.

5: Raise lift high enough so get under the car and start taking crap off.

6: Remove the crossmember. Remove the front engine mount/bracket entirely. Remove starter heat shield/starter. Remove y-pipe and midpipe and the little bar that runs where the mid-pipe and up-pipe connect. Remove the little view plate on the bellhousing.

7: Remove the hub nuts. Remove the nuts for the control arms. Remove the nuts for the tie rods. Release the control arms and the tie rods from the hub. This will involve the split fork and a hammer... Release the hubs from the axles.

8: Driver's side axle pulls out pretty easy. Passenger side is a 2 piece axle. There is a black metal bracket in the middle, you need to unbolt it from the engine block, keep this axle in 1 piece when you pull it, unless you pay VERY CAREFUL ATTENTION TO PUT IT BACK TOGETHER PERFECTLY WHEN YOU ARE DONE OR IT WILL RESULT IN A BROKEN AXLE! JUST ASK THE ONLY SHOP TO EVER TOUCH MY CAR. lets just say, they didnt do it right.

9: Remove the rear motor mount assembly.

10: Lower the car to a workable hieght. Break all teh bolts loose on the upper bellhousing. There should be 4 or so large bolts on the upper half which connect the BH to the motor. You want everything loose enough to remove them by hand when you are ready. Also loosen the transmisson mount, but leave it attached for now.

11: DOUBLE CHECK AND TRIPLE CHECK to make sure nothing is attached to the upper half of the BH.

12: Raise the car back up.

13: Now is when you need a transmission jack and a tower jack of some sort to support the motor, since it is about to be hanging only by 1 mount. Get your jacks into place on both parts. Remove all the bolts from the lower half of the BH which attach it to the motor. I cant remember how many bolts are down there.

14: Whoever you hate the most now gets to climb up and remove the upper BH bolts, and teh motor mount bolts. The actual mount wont come off until the transmission comes down a bit.

15: Do your final checks to make sure absolutly nothing is still attached to the BH... if it check out okay, you are ready to fight the tranny.

16: with your tranny now supported by nothing but the output shaft and the tranmission jack, you have to use an "out and down" kinda motion to lower it, you need to slide it off the output shaft and wiggle and cuss at it while you try to get it to lower.... you will easily see everything i gets caught on. and you will easily see when the point comes to remove the tranny mount. dont worry about spilling fluid from teh axle ports, thats why you bought new shit.

17: once you get it to the ground, move it aside and remove the pressure plate and clutch assembly from the flywheel. stare in awe at the damage you have done to it... (please reference Dead pressure plate/clutch)

18: replace the needed parts following the provided instructions.
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Putting it all back together is really just the opposite of taking it apart. The way I like to go with it is

1: Bellhousing, tranny mount (take note that the tranny mount onyl will go back on before the tranny goes all the way on. at about the same posistion it came off), rear mount

2: Starter/starter heat shield, axles. (with the axles, they press in by hand fairly easy, but if you happened to pull your passenger side axle into 2 peices you will have to hammer it back together. make sure you put something like a piece of wood in between your hammer and the threads for your hub bolt... dont be that guy.)

3: Wheel hubs, control arms, tie rods, wheel hub nuts, put in your new pins.

4: All smaller wires and connections on the bottom half.

5: Lower the car, linkage, clutch fluid line, speedo plug, all the other little crap you took off.

6: raise the car. Put your exhaust stuff back on, cross-member. double check everything on the bottom half.

7: lower the car, double check the top half. battery, intake.

8: tires. top off the gear box on oil.

9: make sure it starts. bleed your clutch.

10: be very gentle on your new clutch for at least 500 miles. this is the most important break in on your car. No launching it, no hard shifting. My car never seen anything over 2000-2400 RPM'S for 600 miles.
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Like i said, this is a very generic walkthrough. This is quite a simple process, if you break your shit, it isnt my fault. If you have more specific questions, feel free to PM me, although im in Iraq and I can't promise a timely response. There are a few of us who have done this ourselves and have not had any issues.

To those guys who have done it before, if there is anything you would like to add, anything I missed, or something I said was just wrong, please add or correct.

I wish I could give more, but like I said, real life is going on right now, and it has been a while since I did mine.

[dc5jimbo]

+rep well said broski

[Live4Redline]

Well done mate. +eRep to you!