jheis

Can the clutch lever ball cup (the one at the top of the bell housing) be replaced without pulling the clutch?

Mine went from chirping to rattling pretty badly. I thought the clutch had to come out, but I was talking to a friend yesterday who thought it could be done in situ.

The car is a '89.

James

Erik N

IIRC there is a cutout in the bellhousing right where the lever sits on the ball, at about 11 o'clock. Good luck with that though, getting a tool to swing there.

Rob Edwards

You'd have to drop the exhaust to get the lower bellhousing cover off (assuming stock exhaust and someone hasn't already left the rearmost pair of bolts out), but you ought to be able to shim the pressure plate so that the release arm can come off the ball, and replace the cup in situ.

jheis

Hey Erik

How ya doin. Been a long time. You a Tejas native now?

Yeah, you can see the top of the clutch lever from top of the engine, I'm just trying to figure out how to move it far enough back to be able to swap in a new ball cup.

Rob:

Having fun with your "extra" set of '93 GTS wiring diagrams?

What do you mean by "shim" the pressure plate? If I'm that far into it, it probably makes sense to just go ahead and drop the clutch. Not that big a deal...

James

Bill Ball

I've done with two people, clutch inplace. One works from below with a prybar to lever the lever back off the cup. The other replaces the cup from above and helps guide the lever back over the cup.

Erik N

Not a native quite yet, I still eat vegetables.

And I still have my (415) area code cell phone #. You should see the look on the local's faces when I call them and it shows "San Francisco" on their screen! Their faces scrunch up and their skin turns red as they mouth "San Fransisco, What the f*ck?" LOL

Good luck with the ball cup, Kommie!

U-928

I would say yes.

Don't know about on an '89, but I was able to change mine out on my '82 just by pulling the airbox and removing the slave cyl to take tension off the bottom of the lever. Mine was completely missing in action, job complete in less than an hour.

Fixer

I replaced mine over the weekend, if you take your time it can be done and boy was it worth doing. Mine was completely gone. I used my flexible 'grabber' tool and greased the ball cup so it would stick onto the ball it snaps on. I then made a tool to carefully lever it on the ball and the TO bearing lever slides over it.
Good luck

jwillman

I did my 79 by myself, wished I would have had a second set of hands, but can be done. My ball cup was completely missing as well

You will have to shim the clutch plates and in my case I found that if I used very thick links of chain cut in half that it gave me just enough clearance to get the new cup in and then with chain links removed used a large pry bar to pop the release lever back onto the ball.

Later I realized my clutch discs were actually stuck to the clutch plate from lack of use and a local instructed me on using a ratchet strap running from the bottom of the release arm, where the slave rod engages the release arm, to the back of the under frame to get the release arm to full release travel and I think this would have also worked to give some extra room for the upper ball cup install. Watch the tension when releasing the strap as there is no lady like way to ease that tension