Removing a manual transmission from a 2nd gen GS-T/GSX

[97GSTspyder]

Dropping a manual transmission from a 2nd gen GS-T/GSX.

Notes: I have done this on my car (1997 GS-T Spyder) and my friends 1993 GSX. I will explain everything to the best of my knowledge. I'm not sure how much different it is to work on a 2nd gen GSX.

How to drop a manual transmission...Get going 110mph on the highway and dump it into 1st lol. Make sure you're in a garage that has plenty of room and all of the tools you're going to need. Start by taking off the simple stuff like battery, tray, airbox/filter, intake tube, hose from UICP to throttle body elbow, bov, UICP helps if removed. Stuff clean rags into the turbo inlet and TB elbow. This is to prevent any dust or anything else from getting in. I also find it helpful if the radiator hoses are out too. So start by draining your radiator. The drain plug is on the driver side of the car, on the bottom of the radiator.

Next (if you haven't already done so) jack up the front end of the car a good height. You want the car to be pretty high because after the tranny is dropped, you don't want to remove the front bumper cover to slide it out from under the car. Support the vehicle with jackstands. Remove both front wheels.

Now to get more serious. Support the transmission with another jack. You'll want to use a transmission jack if you have one. If you don't, don't worry, it's just going to be harder If you do use a regular jack, place a piece of wood on top of the jack. Slowly and carefully jack up the transmission. Jack it up just a little. This is to relieve the stress on the mount 'through-bolts' and also to prevent the tranny from falling on the ground. Got it jacked up a bit?

Start on the transmission main mount. Use a socket (17mm i think), ratchet and a wrench to get the tranny mount through-bolt out. Put the wrench on the nut on the firewall side. Ratchet on radiator side. Pop it loose and take it out. If it won't come out easily, play with the jack some. It's either not jacked up enough, or too much. After that, I think the rest of the mount bolts are 14mm or 15mm (maybe even 17mm, shit I can’t remember) that attach the mount to the tranny. Take all those out. Now you have a mount just resting there and it won't completely come out. Don't worry about it, let it sit there for now.

Now you must remove the rear mount. This one is a bitch because it's a tight squeeze. All of the bolts are 14mm or 15mm I believe. Basically same thing as the tranny main mount, except smaller and harder to get to. It's located behind the motor, to the right of the fuel filter (if you're looking at your engine bay). After you get all the bolts out of that one, let it sit there if you want because it is a little tricky to pull it out.

Now to do the front mount. Same size bolts as the rear mount. You'll have to do this one under the car. This mount is in front of the motor, under the turbo. Take that mount off (this is easy). The two bolts holding it to the crossmember are under the car. There are two holes in the crossmember.

After you have both front and rear disconnected, break those two bolts loose on the very front of the crossmember. These bolts are right in front of the front mount, on the underside of the crossmember. After those are out, there is like 1 or 2 more bolts to be taken off of the crossmember from under the car. They're near the back more. After all the bolts are out, get that crossmember out of there and set it aside. Hopefully your jack didn't fail while doing this or you probably wouldn't be reading this right now.

Now, from the top, take out the reverse light connector and vehicle speed sensor. They are on top of the tranny, passenger side. They are just little connectors. Unplug them.

Now take your starter out. Get under the car, go to the rear of the motor, and look up just under the intake manifold. You should see the starter. Disconnect the wires from the solenoid. Right now would be great if you had someone helping you out. Have someone loosen the starter bolts. There are two of them, on the passenger side on top. These two bolts go through the tranny, into the starter, near the back of the motor. (14mm i think). As your buddy disconnects the bolts, you support the starter and pull it out.

Now on each side of the car, get a balljoint separator and start on either side of the car. You’re going to remove the knuckle from the upper control arm. First start by getting the nut off. After that is done use your balljoint separator and wedge it between the balljoint that is attached to the control arm and the knuckle. Use a hammer and tap away until it separates. It is hard not to bust the balljoint, but try not to. When I did mine I busted one balljoint. These things aren’t cheap, either. Once you have done this on each side, it will enable you to remove the drive axles from the transmission.

Get a pan and place it under the tranny. You're going to drain the tranny fluid. First take off the fill plug (in front of the tranny, near the dampner), then take off the drain plug (on the passenger side of the tranny). Make sure you have a pan under each hole and let it all drain out.

Now you can go ahead and remove both drive axles. To do this, get a big ass screwdriver or something thin and strong. Wedge it between the tranny and axle and lightly tap the end of the screwdriver with a hammer. Be very careful in doing this. You don’t want to ruin the seals. The axle should slowly start to separate. After you get both axles out, put them out of the way and support them with a bungee cord or something (if you're leaving them in the vehicle).

Now it's time to take off the slave cylinder. There are two bolts holding it to the tranny. Take the two bolts out and pull it out of the fork. No need to disconnect the hydraulic line. If you do disconnect the line, you will have to bleed your clutch when everything is back together. Well, you probably should bleed it anyway once everything is said and done.

Now you're going to take off the clutch hydraulic dampner. There are 3 or 4 bolts holding it to the tranny. Take the bolts out, leave the lines connected. Take the dampner and the line running to the slave and tie it somewhere out of the way.
Disconnect the shift cables from the transmission. Just take the whole bracket out. Two bolts, I think they're 12 or 14mm. Unbolt them, and the cables are still connected to the bracket, but the bracket is no longer connected to the tranny.

To make life simpler, you're going to want to take the downpipe off. Take the two bolts out from the catalytic converter. Then the two to the O2 housing. You’ll probably want to replace your gaskets while you’re at it.

If you're working on a GSX you're going to need to take the transfer case off of the tranny. This isn't very hard. You need to drain the T-case fluid. Place a pan under the drain plug, and drain it. Next you have to take the bolts out that hold it to the tranny. There are 4 or 5 of them I believe. After all of the bolts are out, carefully slide it away from the tranny, while supporting it, and then let the T-case and driveshaft come down to the ground.

Make sure the jack(s) is fully supporting the tranny. Now start taking the tranny-to-motor bolts out. There aren't a lot of them. All except 1 or 2 are 14mm and the one(s) that aren't are 12mm. These bolts are easy to notice. The hardest one to get to is on the driver side, right above the axle. It's a 12mm. Get it out somehow. Now make sure all of the tranny bolts are out. After that is said and done, double check to make sure everything if off that needs to be off.

The fun part - dropping the tranny out. Before even touching that jack, you're going to need to somehow slide the tranny over towards the passenger side as far as you can get it. Take a good size prybar and get it between the motor and tranny. Carefully pry the tranny away from the motor. You are in the process of disengaging the input shaft. Get that tranny as far as it will go to the passenger side of the car. The input shaft is now disengaged. SLOWLY and CAREFULLY lower the jack. This is easier if you have someone help you. You need to make sure the rear tranny mount bracket will clear. You'll probably have to grab it and pull it up and slowly lower the jack to make everything clear. After everything clears, slowly let the tranny come down and slide it out from under the car. If you can’t get the tranny to come down and out, find a way. As long as you disconnected everything and disengaged the input shaft, find a way to get it out.

Replacing the clutch? Now would be a great time to do it Once you have the tranny out in the open, take the throw-out bearing out. This is easy. Look inside the bell housing of the tranny. You should see the input shaft. The t/o bearing is near the back of the bellhousing. There is a clip that goes around the bearing and connects into the fork. Take the clip off, and slide the bearing out. Might as well replace it since they are fairly cheap, and sometimes come with a new clutch assembly. Now, to get the clutch components off. Yes, they are still bolted to the motor. There are 6 or 7 pressure plate-to-flywheel bolts. All 12mm or 14mm I think. Carefully loosen them. When you break all of them loose, work in a criss-cross pattern to take them out. Lossening little by little each bolt. This relieves spring pressure. (This was how I was told to do this.) After all bolts are out, make sure you are supporting the pressure plate and clutch disc, as they will drop. Take the clutch disc and pressure plate out and inspect them for any damage. Look for any bent/broken fingers on the pressure plate, and any warpage on the friction side. Look at the clutch disc to see if any springs are broke or to see if it is blue/purple, and inspect the pads. After that, inspect the flywheel surface for any scoring/heat marks. Now is a good time to get the flywheel resurfaced at a machine shop for like $30. Make sure they resurface it to the correct stepping height for whichever clutch you are putting in.

To get the flywheel off, you need to jam the flywheel so it doesn't turn the crank when breaking the bolts loose. The bolts are 17mm, and there are 7 of them (yeah, thus the name 7 bolt motor). These things are torqued pretty good. You might have to use a breaker bar on them. Just make sure you have the flywheel teeth jammed. Oh, and don’t strip these

After getting the flywheel off, find a machine shop that will resurface your flywheel. Call them and ask them if they can make it a certain height and get prices.

You also might want to take an air compressor and blow out anything in the bellhousing. If you’re leaving your flywheel on, but want to clean it up, use brake cleaner on it and wipe it completely dry. I’ve done this, it works quite nice.

Ready to put a new clutch in? Go buy a heavy duty aftermarket one. ACT and Centerforce are good ones. This summer I’m going to be getting an ACT 2600. Once you get it, replace the throwout bearing (I already explained how to do this). Take the clutch disc and pressure plate. Handle these two with CLEAN HANDS and try not to touch any of the friction surfaces. Hold the clutch disc up and place it on the flywheel. Use your alignment tool to put through the center of the disc and into that little hole in the center of the flywheel. Place your pressure plate over the alignment tool and adjust it to where all of the holes line up. Bolt it up to the flywheel. Get each bolt hand tight, then start using a socket and ratchet on them. Get them to where you feel resistance. All of them. Now get your torque wrench and torque them to spec, tightening each one little by little. After every bolt is torqued, remove the alignment tool. Your new clutch is now installed. Time to put the tranny back in.

This is pretty much self-explanatory. Get it on the jack, put it under the car, raise it. The hardest thing about getting it back in, is trying to engage the input shaft. If your tranny won’t slide up to the motor, you’ll have to spin the input shaft a bit, then try again. After that, get it all lined up and bolt her back up! Just remember after getting everything back together, fill up all of your fluids that you drained. Then cross your fingers, start the car and see if your clutch engages

If there was anything that I forgot to mention, go ahead and add/correct me. The purpose of this writeup is to help all of you wanting to replace your clutch yourself. So any added comments will be great! Being that it’s almost 5AM I’m sure I might have forgotten something. Good luck to all of you who replace your clutch. Always use good jacks and jackstands and don’t be in a rush taking your transmission out! The first time always takes the longest.

Finally finished the writeup! 4/1/05 4:43AM.

[shadow eclipse]

Nice writeup!! Thanks man this will come in handy!!

[kjewer1]

I'll add my usuall calrifications, and some tips. I like these writeups.

The side tranny mount is a 17mm through bolt and nut, and 5 17mm nuts. The rear mount is a 14mm through bolt and nut, and 3 17mm bolts hold it to the tranny. I would pull it out right away also. IF the tranny moves around and pushes/pulls on the mount it can snap the speed sensor that comes up through it. The front mount is a 14mm through bolt and nut. I dont remove the mount from the crossmember, since you have to remove the crossmember anyway.

There is no need to disconnect the start wires. The battery is usually out when dong this job, and the start wire goes to the battery. So you can pull the starter and its wiring harness out together. There is a small black connector to the main harness for the solenoid power. The bolts are in fact 14mm head. All of the starter work can be done from above the car.

The crossmember and "gusset" have to be pulled at the same time. The gusset has 5 14mm bolts, one going through it and the crossmember. The crossmember has one more 14mm further back, and the 2 17mm bolts at the radiator support. Dont drop it on your head. I like to leave the through bolt (or a screw driver) in the front motor mount so I can undo all of those bolts without worrying about it falling.

There is also no need to remove any balljoints, and in fact I Remcomend leaving those alone. Too risky. Much easier to remove the 17mm through bolt and nut at the inner end of the Lower Laterall Link (straight lower control arm). That gives plenty of play to get the axle out. You dont even ahve to do the drivers side, since as you move the tranny away from the motor it will fall out, but doing both sides is certainly helpful for poeple that havent done this 100 times. I dont touch anything else on the suspension.

Take steves warning about the passenger side axle seal seriously. Its veyr easy to damage it. Its only 7 bucks, but I'm usually doing this at 2 in the morning when its too late to go pick one up. I have an idea for a special tool that will pop the axle out effortlessly with no possible chance of ruining the seal. Someday I'll get around to making it. And I'll make a bunch and sell them cheap. SOmeday. The drivers side axle has no retention clip, so this isnt much of an issue on that side. The carrier bearing holds it in.

The slave bolts and shift cable bracket bolts are 12mm.

I stopped removing the downpipe a couple years ago. There is enough flex in the flex section to get the tcase bolts out. 5 17mms hold the tcase in. I dont drain the oil either. If you dont let the driveshaft come out of the tcase, all the fluid stays in. Shit, I must have dropped that tcase 15 times and never changed the fluid. I break shit too often to be replacing that much gear oil That tcase is extremely heaving when you are laying on the ground cramped and beat to shit. Be careful with it.

That 12mm bolt on the firewall side of the motor/tranny is the one that porks most poeple. It goes in the wrong way, from the drivers side, as mentioned. The rest of the bolts will vary between different years. For a 6 bolt there will be 3 more bolts, all 14mm heads. For a 7 bolt there is another bolt. Some 2Gs had 17mm heads, others had 14mm. But they are all M10x1.25 fasteners regardless. One of them will go through the small clip that holds the heater pipe. Do yourself a favor and toss that piece of shit clip in the barrell right now. Otherwise it will come back to haunt you on reinstall. I saw 5 poeple struggling with a tranny install in the econlodge parking lot at the shootout for what seemed like an hour. I Was too busy drinking beerz to worry about it. But after a while it occured to me that they were having issues, and I knew immediately it was that clip for the heater pipe. They were kicking themselves in the ass after I suggested that. This guy dropped that tranny in 24 minutes too, so he's no amatuer. Dont let this happen to you, get rid of that clip.

When removing and installing the tranny be sure that the angle of the motor and tranny is still close to horizontal. Its tempting to let the tranny end hang down and let gravity do the work. But the front diff protrusion will interfere with the bulge in the K member and make your life hell. Keep the motor close to stock position. Just low enough to let the tranny mount studs clear the frame rail.

6 pressure plate bolts, 12mm. You are correct in loosening in stages to relieve the pressure evenly. Some flywheel bolts are 19mm, but again, same thread size and pitch. There is a square drive hole in the crank pulley bolt most of the time, otherwise use an appropriate socket, and have a friend use a breaker bar there to hold the motor. You dont want the motor to spin backwards if you can help it. Or put a pipe on the breaker bar and wedge it against the floor or the frame rail, depending on if you are installing or removing those bolts.

Clean all clutch parts with break cleaner before installing. New plates come with an oil coating to prevent rust. The flywheel will have oil on it from the machine work. Oil doesnt help the clutch hold the torque

Toruqe specs I use are 90 ft-lbs for the flywheel (use new bolts! only ~15 bucks), and 30 pounds for the pressure plate bolts.



Man, thats a lot of writing. None of this is to say steve was wrong on any points. There are different ways to do it. Now you have two methods. Use one, the other, or a combination of the two as you see fit. Other people have other ways of doing this as well. Enjoy

[scottsee]

i have so many things yet to learn.. great write up, veary good information.

[george536]

LOL it took me 3days, 3 buddies, engine hoiste, and a whole bunch of patience and frustration to do my Clutch in my garage. It really helps if you have the right tools. Air tools are always fun.

[kjewer1]

I have air tools, but I rarely use them in a clutch swap. I can still do it in 3 hours if I'm properly motivated. I've found that having a car that is setup to practically fall apart when you show it a wrench is the most helpful thing I've done. No AC, no cruise, no uneccessary bracketry/wiring, etc.

Edit> And some tips for that pesky rear mount that can cost hours by itself, in case I forgot to mention them above.

Ratcheting box end, 17mm, will save your life.

The 3 holes that go to the tranny, enlarge them ever so slightly. It will make the angle of the motor and tranny less critical when trying to get those 3 bolts started.

AC is in the way. Cruise is in the way. Battery bracket is in the way. They are all gone now.

Edit> Also, I dont think we mentioned the drivers side axle carrier bearing being bolted to the block above. I believe its only on the AWD cars? 2 14mm bolts, the tips are not threaded. A ratcheting box end does wonders again in this case.

[EclipseRST]

Originally Posted by 95 GSXracer

Ratcheting box end, 17mm, will save your life.

The 3 holes that go to the tranny, enlarge them ever so slightly. It will make the angle of the motor and tranny less critical when trying to get those 3 bolts started.

Also another thing to point out. The 2 bolts sticking thru the strut tower that holds up the rotor (I want to say its the A-Arm but I dont really fucking know - sorry I'm a little drunk)... Anyways here is a picture:



If you pull those 2 nuts on each side, you can drop the whole assembly and you can pop the axle shafts out of the tranny 100 times easier then fucking with any other bolts on the ball joints or strut bracket. Much faster and you dont have to sit and wale on it with a hammer to get it to drop if some of you know what I am talking about!