Working on Vehicles (continued)

I haven't done that much work on vehicles, it's just that when I do it is usually something big or important.

On my previous truck, a 1994 Chevy S10 2.2L 4cyl 5spd that I had for 15 months, I replaced the clutch. Now, this wasn't the easiest thing in the world to do, but luckily it was rear-wheel drive so the engine and transmission weren't crammed in. I drove the truck to Melrose, WI (about 20 minutes away from West Salem) on a cold, rainy night. My friend followed me in his truck. I normally take a route that has a steep hill with a lot of twists on it. I didn't want to go this way because my clutch was slipping fairly good and I didn't want to loose my momentum. I chose an alternate route that I had taken only once before. It still had a hill, but it was more gradual and the corners where not sharp at all. I kept the engine revving pretty good up the hill. I stayed in 3rd gear and kept it at over 3,000 rpm. When I reached the top, a sudden turn came out of no where. I didn't lift off the gas too much. Since the road was wet, the back end slid out from behind me a little bit. Finally I reach the guys garage.

I drove the front of the truck up on ramps that you usually use for changing oil and put the back end up on jack stands (we only had 2 jack stands). In order to remove the transmission, the drive shaft had to come out first. That was easy. Then a cross member supporting the back end of the transmission had to come out. The nut that held the transmission to the cross member was rusted in place (after 12 years of MN and WI winter roads). I had to take a grinder and grind it off being careful not to grind away the threads on the bolt. Finally I got that done. Next we had to unbolt the tranny from the engine. There were about 10 bolts holding it on. The real hard ones were the ones on top of the tranny because we had a hard time getting to them. We also had to take the shifter off to get it to drop through the hole in the floor. We finally go the tranny out. Getting the clutch out was easy. All we had to do was unbolt the pressure plate (a bunch of really strong springs that keep the clutch engaged) and remove it and the clutch.

The clutch I had bought came with the clutch disc and a new pressure plate. We could see that the old pressure plate had gotten fairly hot because there were blue spots on it. So we bolted up the new pressure plate and clutch. Now we only had to lift the tranny back up, bolt it back in, put the cross member back in, and finally reconnect the drive shaft. All this sounds simple and straight forward, but the entire project took two nights of work (probably 8 to 9 hours maybe).

So after 180,000 miles, I guess I got my money's worth out of the original clutch.

Here's a video that shows how a clutch works and some of the parts I replaced.