pat944

I'm part way through a clutch job on my 944, and have run into a little snag, I've been following the instructions from Clarks Garage and Paragon's Tech site for the whole process, and while some of the things have been a little different we've gotten along pretty well with it. Until we came to dropping the transaxle out that is.

The guides say to shift this part back towards the gearbox. This is the drive shaft retainer part you can see through the bottom of the transaxle bellhousing, both of the guides said this was held on with two bolts, however this only had one in it, as well my dad thinks it could have been brazed onto the shaft possibly. Anyway, the big problem is this thing isn't moving, I don't want to drop the transaxle at all without getting this off because I can see a bent drive shaft and/or torque tube being the result. Any got any idea's or had this problem trying to do a clutch job.


And once we finally that above part out of the way, it says you're supposed to move the transaxle back before dropping, my question if how far exactly, cause there's only this much room.


And not so much of a problem, but how's this for over engineering the solution to keeping the transaxle on the jack.


The upside to all this is once we got the starter off this is a sample of what we found in the bottom, so I'm pretty definate that the clutch is the problem.


Any help anyone here could give would be greatly appreciated. We'd hoped to have the transaxle out tonight and be finished by tomorrow evening, but it's not gunna happen at this rate.

Luis de Prat

You'll get good responses from people who have done this, but I recall something about having to turn the torque tube 90 degrees to clear some "ears" on it that will allow it to slide back further?

944_S_TYPE

Hey, Why cant I see your pictures?

pat944

We haven't actually gotten to that stage yet, we need to get the transmission of before we look at sliding the torque tube back, and that's the big pickle at the moment, we can't get the driveshaft disconnected from the transmission input shaft.

pat944

Umm.... I dunno about the pictures, I can see them, can anyone else not see them, cause that would make what I've written pretty hard to figure out, it's sitting on my ISP's server, so I dunno what they're doing.

Luis de Prat

Todd just posted this to another thread about removing the torque tube, I know you're getting the tranny out, but it might help:

"Do you mean pulling it out of the bell housing? If so, you have to take the bell housing the tube back as a unit. There is a clip on the end of the tube that holds everything together. You have to unbolt the dampner from the flywheel and push it off of the flywheel. Then take the bell housing bolts loose and pull the reference sensors out. Also take the grounding strap loose. You should then be able to pull it back as a unit. then you will see the clip. Then after you take the clip off, you can pull the dampner off."

Charlie

One of the bolts is the one you are looking at through the rectangular hole. The other bolt is toward the torque tube and is reached through the round hole. You must take both bolts out and silde the connector completely off the torque tube shaft toward the tranny.

pat944

I'm not sure, I think he's either talking about the same spline clip in the transmission bell housing, and having the same problem of getting it off, or about the clutch bell housing. I'm not quite sure about the differences in doing this for the auto and manual tranmissions.

Luis de Prat

You may want to ask Todd directly. I know he's parted out several manual 944s.

pat944

Both instruction guides from paragon and clarks garage only mentioned taking off the inspection plate, so that hopefully explains most of our problems. I'm not gunna go out now and look at it cause it's 11:30pm at the moment, however, I'll post the results when I get everything back together.

ErichCS

Pat944 - Did you see this? It looks like from your picture the round acess plug is still in place, its right in front(closer to the engine) of the larger rectangular one. Open that one up and there is another bolt on that clamp you need to remove.

Also just as a heads up - With an assistant pressing down the clutch you can turn that whole shaft assembly by hand to gain best acess to these bolts.

Good Luck and keep us updated!
Erich

pat944

Yes, we also figured that you can turn the whole thing after taking the cv's off, both the guides had us turning the back wheels, which doesn't work too well because the wheels are holding the car up on jacktstands.

The up side is that I shall be repacking the cv's, it looks like one side was done and the other was not, no clicking from them yet, but the drivers side cv has some pretty gummy looking grease in it.

pat944

Does anyone know why you have to pull the shifter linkage off from the shifter inside the car, i thought it would be enough to just disconnect it from the transmission end. Or do the linkages run connected to the torque tube or something like that?

ErichCS

The reason for that is to get it out of the way of the transaxle as your going to be lowering it down. You need to get the shifter linkage far enough forward to drop the tranny straight down. If you look where it runs now the shaft it half way along the transaxle IIRC...

Does that make sense?
Erich

pat944

yup, that's what i was thinking but i thought i'd throw the question out while i was aking about the other stuff