I had a chance to finally get this done. I had a wedding to go to this weekend, left on Friday night and came back on Sunday. I had Friday off so I tore the car apart on Friday. put it back together last night and its PERFECT. Let me get into the details.
First, the throwout bearing came out in 4 pieces. The pilot bearing needles also crumbled. The pressure plate, disk and flywheel looked pretty good, but they got replace anyway. I saved the flywheel, pressure plate and disk since it is already matched. The trans already had a steel bearing retainer on it, and that was pretty well worn due to the TO bearing failure The steel bearing retainer should be standard equipment on these t5s.
Here is what I learned:
1. to get out the pilot bearing, soap is probably not the best stuff to use. Play Doh is probably best, and you want to use the alignment tool to force it all in there and eventually pop out the bearing. i broke two alignment tools using the soap, and eventually wound up using a T5 broken input shaft that someone had laying around the shop - came out of a busted t5. solid steel worked better with soap than the hollow plastic alignment tools. there's plenty of vids on youtube about this using grease, so I wont get into details.
2. my engine is going to come out soon - there's another thread on the upgrade to the 306 - so I didnt bother doing the rear main when it probably needed it. I cleaned it up really good and smeared it with black RTV. when the motor comes out I'll let everyone know how well that worked.
3. The steel bearing retainer does not come with a race for the input shaft bearing. luckily my parts store had the bearing / race in stock (part number A5 from national bearing). I should have shimmed the back of it so that there was no end play. spec is 0 for end play. the trans was so sloppy that I'm just going to shop for a rebuilt one for when I do the engine swap. Use RTV on the back side of the bearing retainer and DONT spin the trans while the bearing retainer is off. it holds everything in place.
4. Test fit the throwout bearing on the steel bearing retainer. If its tight, use some sandpaper to get a good fit. make sure to lube the contact surfaces of the clutch fork after you clean that up really good.
5. I had a freshly surfaced flywheel going in. make sure you test fit the pressure plate / disk on the flywheel before putting it in the car. there was one of the three dowl pins that needed to be hammered straight before the pressure plate fit right on the dowls.
6. loctite the flywheel bolts. this does two things - prevents them from backing out and acts as a thread sealer. there's oil behind the crank!
7. having a plug for the trans will save you from having to drain it / refill it. OR use a stock yoke from an old driveshaft. I had one, should have used it, but figured I would replace the trans fluid anyway.
8. Doing this job with a friend makes it go exponentially faster. geting out from under the car every time to get a tool is a pain, but will double as an ab workout.
9. make sure you have a firewall adjuster and a good quadrant. The HDX I put in required the firewall adjuster to come almost all the way out. It would have helped to have the triple or even a double hook quadrant. I had the Maximum motorsports kit (cable, FW adjuster, quadrant) and that was only a single hook. Good thing that firewall adjuster had enough thread!
10. the clutch will be grabby to start with, and will eventually let the pedal raise up a bit once its broken in.
I'm really happy with the way it shifts now. and the aluminum driveshaft makes it feel like there's more power. I'll be commuting with this on thursday so I'll report back with how it feels on the highway.
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one more thing. the RAM 501 bearing seemed OK. if it shows any signs of failure - i'll report back!
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one more thing - the sn95 clutch forks are completely different than the foxbody forks.
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