This has been the biggest nightmare job ever. I've changed probably hundreds of clutches, but this had to have been the worst experience ever. This time, I didn't have a lift to do it on. No big deal, I thought. I've changed the clutch in my 7 in the driveway and on jackstands before.

Wrong.

Not on a turbovert. That extra little piece of subframe right behind the K-member made everything so hard. To top it all off, I'm pretty sure a couple of the alignment dowels were corroded, so I couldn't get the trans off without shoving prybars all around the bell housing and working it off little by little. Then, once I got it all off, the car wasn't high enough to slide the transmission out with the transmission jack I had it on. So now I had to finagle that sonofabitch off the jack in order to get it out from under the damn car.



So, for you guys who have changed the clutch in your turbovert, do you find it easier to just remove the vert-specific k-member? I don't EVER recall having as much trouble getting the NA transmission out/in. This one was a bear just to get to separate, much less actually get it OUT of the transmission tunnel. It was just stuck, and didn't want to budge for whatever reason.

 

4 bolts,I think,(or 8) removes that frame reinforce and it makes **** alot simpler.It just hangs after you take the bolts out.You lift and Poof it is off.
If you jacked the car up,you could and should have made sure the trans was gonna slide out..lol!.
I never use a trans jack.and I do the crap in my gravel driveway.
I think you just didn't think it through,BUT you will the next time!

 

So, to recap, you remove four bolts and **** moves a lot easier. But you specialize on dropping your crap in a gravel driveway.

Sounds really unsanitary. Painful even is you're using that same gravel to clean up afterward.

To the OP. My mother in law speaks little english. But she has a saying that roughly translates "A lazy man does twice the work". It doesn't matter if it's a TurboVert or a stock NA Vert. Those braces are installed with bolts so you can take them off to R&R the transmission. Dealing with those braces is the price of admission to owning a Vert.

As the owner of two TurboVerts, I've never had the trouble you described. But I say that tongue in cheek as I'm pulling my own clutch this weekend. So I hope my being a wise *** doesn't jinx me.

 

I say you should remove that brace... and give it to me! I'm not sure I have the 'vert one...

 

Actually... it may be the OTHER one that is giving me **** (the forward one).

 

Wow..
Ya after I take the parts Off I bury them.
Some people just don't have the Privelege of working on Pavement or in a Spiffy garage Hozz.
I'm saying you work with what you got,and you can make it work if you work smart.
I put down a sheet of 1/2 inch plywood(4x8).It slides right in between the wheels and goes 8 feet back.
Ta-da!..instant garage floor.

 

I've never had any issues pulling the transmission before when it was an NA. The crossmember never made any difference to me, I just left it on there. Now that it's got the TII drivetrain, I guess it's a different story.

And I don't think that I didn't "think it through" before pulling the transmission off. As a former ASE certified auto tech, I've done far more clutch jobs than most people here have. The real issue was that once I actually got the transmission loose, it shifted on the transmission jack so far that I was stuck trying to hold it on there. It would have been fine if it wasn't seized on the engine by the alignment dowels. Once it popped loose, it made things very hairy. It was at that point that the k-member was discovered to have been in the way.

Lesson learned. The NA transmission was easy to pull without removing the little frame piece; the TII transmission is bigger, life would have been easier had I removed it to begin with.

 

i would never have even tried to leave that extra brace on!

 

You're not the first person to go through that learning curve the hard way. Trust me on that. However, even when my Vert was an NA I found it SO much easier to R&R the tranny after removing those 8 bolts and the cross member.

Misterstyx, I was just playing with ya in your fecal matter references. I've done my share of crawling in the dirt working on cars as well.

 

Drink some muscle milk and heman that bitch out, ive never had much issues with verts, but the coupes are much easier lol. Try taking a vert trans out with a full length header then, you can start bitching haha.

 

HOZZ!..I gotta start removing CRAP and **** from my Internet Vocabulary..
It's makin my answers look like Poop!....( ah Fudge Nuggets!)..LOL!

 

For whatever reason, I always thought that if I pulled that section of cross member out that it would drop the control arms or something. After getting the transmission finagled out of there I took a second look at it and realized that it would not.

This clutch job is going slow because I only get a little time here and there to work on it. I'm also powder-coating that sub frame piece, since it's lost its paint due to a messy master cylinder leak, which has ended up in some surface rust. I've already degreased it, now I'm going to probably media blast and powder coat it before putting it back together.

As a side note, I forgot that the pilot bearing tool I have is too large for the job. I think it's been on the tune of 5 years since I changed a clutch in an FC.

I tried to fabricate a couple tonight, but those ended up in a big mangled mess. I either need some high-carbon steel to make a pilot puller out of, or find one that I can rent that doesn't suck as bad as mine does