Badue

Someone has been into my clutch housing before! All the "cheese-head" bolts are at the point of stripping out.(probably over-tightened) My tool is somewhat old but the teeth are still sharp and I can't get any of them to turn without stripping. They have even taken what looks like a CV shaft bolt and ground the head down for one of them <img src="graemlins/cussing.gif" border="0" alt="[grrrrrrr]" /> Needless to say this is gonna be a PITA! Does anyone have any suggestions? Is there any type of replacement bolt I could go with instead of these dang things that seem to strip the heads off if you look at them funny. I guess I'm going to have to drill these suckers heads off. I cant see teeth in hardly any of the bolt heads that are on it! I don't know how they got them tight unless they ran them all in with an impact and just kept on going! <img src="graemlins/c.gif" border="0" alt="[ouch]" />
Any help?

OVERBOOST

Try this. I would get a hex type, spec 12.9 or so. This would be more than enough. Tighten to factory specs. Good luck. <img src="graemlins/bigok.gif" border="0" alt="[thumbsup]" />

Paul.

OVERBOOST

Lets try again.
<a href="http://butlerboltbarn.com/specs.htm" target="_blank">http://butlerboltbarn.com/specs.htm</a>

TCarrera

Badur,
You need to use am impact driver to loosen the fastners, then install with new ones, everytime.
The hole is very shallow and will round out easily, a new bit would be a good idea too. Sometimes it is necessary to take a chisel and work on the edge of the bolt to get it loose.
You should be able to do it without drilling. Be patient. Make sure you have a clutch alignment tool to reinstall the disc. Also make sure you replace the throwout bearing and its alignment sleeve too.
Mike at LR

Luke

overboost,

can I see some pics of your CRYSTAL GREEN METALLIC 951? Im curious about the color!!! <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

Badue

And, I think I may have another problem, the end of my shaft is somewhat out of round where it goes into the pilot bearing. My clutch evidently has come apart because it was bouncing and then stuck engaged. I believe a piece of a spring may have gotten stuck in there. Now, I'm at a quandry over what I should do about the shaft. It looks as if all the chattering (violent) has damaged the shaft. And this is the second (evidently) clutch job on this car with only 55K miles on it. <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

Andrew

lucky you those bolts can be drilled out easily. just drill each of them and pick up some replacements at the dealership. you need to use the small head bolts on the turbo system. also you can grind off the end of the tool to get a fresh edge if you need to. good luck.

cruise98

I bought some allen head socket bolts from Paragon for the pressure plate. They work perfectly. The flywheel bolts are a single use fastener and must be replaced.

If the shaft is damaged, well, you have no choice but to remove the torque tube. Sorry. The entire rear torsion bar carrier has to come out.

Badue

Yeah, I drilled them out rather easily. I've got some replacement bolts coming from eurowebparts.com, I believe they are allen heads too. The shaft looked worse than it was after mesuring with the micrometer. Slightly D-shaped with some pitting on one side.
I also found out what was causing my horrible chattering and the reason why the cluth was locked up. After drilling out the bolts there was a unidentified 3 inch piece of metal in there. I'm still baffled as to its origins. I inspected the pressure plate and disc(which both look really good by the way) and found nowhere that this metal could have come from on them. It look like half of a exhaust flange or something. I should take a picture of it. Before when I was having problems I could turn the car off and push the clutch and restart and it would be fine, evidently this piece of metal was migrating around in there. Bizarre! Anyway I'm going to put the new unit in regardless of the fact that the old one still looks good. Also, there's no scarring on the flywheel surface like I was expecting to see.