Lousailor

Well I made some good progress last night, in fact things were going so well I lost track of time and my wife came out at 1:00 AM to find out what the heck I was doing.

First I had to replace the shaft needle bearings in the clucth fork. The kit I had purchased had new bearings as well as a new shaft, which was good since the old shaft had some scoring on it.

iloveporsches

Just be glad that your fork didn't break like mine! There was an extra $270

Good work so far and keep us posted.

Lousailor

Next I finished cleaning up the bell housing and mounted the new spindle sleeve that came in the kit. I used brake cleaner to get everything out of the fork shaft mounts and coated inside them with moly lube.

Lousailor

Then the fun part: Actually bolting up the clutch mechanism. Haynes makes it look so easy, but I think they have their car on a lift. Things look a little different from on your back on a creeper. First I tried to put up the clutch disk using the alignment tool then slide the pressure plate over the end, but there wasn't enough room between the tool shaft and the firewall. So.. I put the clutch in the pressure plate, and slipped the tool through both and tried to balance all three, while I held it up onto the flywheel with one hand while I tried to find one of the new pressure plate bolts with the other. I almost brained myself with the falling pressure plate, but caught it before and damage to noggin or part. Finally finagled it up into position, slipped three bolts in finger tight and then I could align the clutch with the tool. Once it was centered I could start putting in the rest of the bolts, and then tighten them in accordance with both Haynes and Clark's.

Lousailor

Note the shiny new metal tape I used to cover the ratty torn aluminum/fiberglass insulation.

83na944

Good idea with the tape, Lou.

Lousailor

I kept going until I got the bell housing up and on. That took some doing, it was hanging up on the heater hose and the edge of the ring gear, I was finally able to tilt the motor forward enough to get it in position, bot it wasn't until today that I got all the bell housing mount bolts torqued. I had to actually move a bunch of stuff to get the the top bolt. Bolting the ground wires back up was just as much fun except I did have to disconnect the heater hose to get to it. Then I was able to get the speed and reference sensors back into place, and hooked up. A good thing I took the advice and put a piece of duct tape over that bell housing hole! Another challenge was getting the clutch fork in position. It was a pain to get it in the housing , since I had to wedge it throught the side. but then trying to keep it fom slipping and getting the feet under the lip of the throw-out bearing took a little patience. Luckily once it was all lined up the shaft slipped in with no problem. Unfortunately my next task is to replace the right engine mount before I connect the drive shaft, so I called it quits tonight, after removing the right front suspension parts. Wish me luck tomorrow, maybe I'll be able to hook the tranny back in there.

iloveporsches

You're bringing back nightmares....just be glad you had the clutch lined up properly the first time, otherwise you'd be doing it again like I did. If you don't have a trans. jack, build some kind of rig to put onto your jack to hold the trans. It will make things 100x easier and faster.

Lousailor

Good point. I almost crushed my foot when the thing tumbled off when removing it. Lucky it was already down or I could of done some serious damage to me or it.

Devia

All your stuff looks so nice and shiny, sure you're working on a 944?

Good going, best wishes! And give your wife a hug, she's a trooper!

- Julie

89magic98

Louie,

You never mentioned which of your two cars you're doing this on.

Where did you source the metal tape?

Thanks!

Lousailor

To my wife's disappointment and my chagrin, the afformentioned expenditure in time and funding is for my supposed beater. Unfortunately my rebuild project is probably very jealous, but I will more than likely upgrade my daily driver to an occasional AX player. The tape I got in the body work section at Pep boys. It's got an adhesive backing that's supposed to be good to 250 deg.

Mr. Avionics

Lousailor,
The pic's are great, I'm going to be doing the same thing this comming week and the pics give me an insight into what I'm facing. Keep them coming.
Thanks,

Bill