a better walk through for Clutch work - The Ford Focus Forum

**SaucyMuffin** · 07-13-2009, 10:17 PM

Alright I looked up a walk through for changing out the clutch in our SVTFs and ran across a rather skippy around one I can't remember whos it was, but it was pretty bad we couldn't follow it to save our lives. So we ended up using my Haynes manual and that was pretty crappy aswell.

Tools we used:

T:55 Trox and assorted other sizes of Trox
Metric sockets in varying drive sizes
a few SAE sockets in varying sizes
a 32mm socket to take off the axle nuts
a hub puller (to remove the axles from the hubs)
a Torque wrench (we had a dial kind Try and get your hands on one that goes to 300 ft lbs. if not get what you can)
PB Blaster
3 jacks
and some other sorted stuff
three or more people as well
New clutch, flywheel, and pressure plate (get new flywheel bolts not really needed but good to have)
Mercon V automatic transmission fluid
Dot 3 brake fluid (for the clutch hydro line)

We started by jacking the car and removing the wheels, while two of us were taking off the wheels two others took out the battery, battery box, air box and coil pack and shift cables off of the linkage. Once we had the wheels off we removed the center caps and put the wheels back on. We used a breaker bar with a cheater bar (This is an EASY way to break your breaker arm or hurt yourself) combined with the 32mm socket and loosened both axle nuts. We jacked the car back up and took the wheels back off, the rotors and used some wire to tie up the calipers at the highest possible point on the springs of the suspension (take the brake lines off the support). After that we removed the pinch bolt on the ball joints and pulled them out. We then hooked the hub puller up putting the center point on the axle and then used the hub to hook up to the puller and we pushed the axle right out.

After the axles were out of the hubs we took the u-clamp off of the passenger axle and then pulled the passenger axle out without a problem at all. When we pulled the drivers axle out we had to pry on where it entered the transmission, (watch where you pry and how hard there is an oil seal on it). Don't worry about fluid spilling out as we didn't run across any untill we drained the trans. Now is a good time to use one jack and a piece of wood to support the engine and we used a bottle jack to put under the connection of the tranny and engine.

A good step to take after this would to be take all 6 of the K member bolts out and set those off to the side the member will drop quite a few inches which will give you plenty of space to pull the transmission out. With K member out you are now ready to start working on the transmission itself. Begin by taking the 3 bolts on the starter out (2 on the transmission side of it and 1 on the engine side of it) while under the car the starter is right above the catalytic converter (you might be able to better access it by removing the converter but we just reached around it and got it) after you do that use the third jack with a piece of wood and support the transmission and start taking the bolts of it make sure you take the bolt out of the Dog bone aswell (you should get two people under the transmission to help hold it up) we had a metal bar across the fender of the car with a strap hooked onto the transmission to help hold it up.

Once you get all the bolts out of the trans. you can start to wiggle it back and you will feel when the splines slip out of the clutch and the trans will start to fall down. We used the third jack as a rest point/safty point in case it slipped out of our hands and also the strap to help slowly lower it down. After twisting it around alittle bit we got it out and were acutally able to just pick it up by hand and move it out from under the car by lifting up the driver side fender well.

Once we had the transmission out we removed the old throw out bearing and replaced it with the new one torquing it down to the required specs (which I cannot remember those off the top of my head) we then set out to remove the clutch which we did without a problem. Now I will recommend that you pick up new flywheel bolts but we didn't use new flywheel bolts and just used the stock ones. There is a three step process to putting the flywheel on. You need to first torque all six bolts (in a diagonal pattern) to 33 ftlbs. the next step is 50 ftlbs. and the final step I believe is 80 something pounds once I get the haynes book out of my car I will be sure of that. Then the clutch disk goes on and the pressure plate and then the alignment tool. we used a screw driver to wedge into the gears of the flywheel and the block to hold it still while we torqued the pressure plate down. After all that is finally torqued down go ahead and put a wrench on the pullies on the front of the engine and spin it a few times just to be sure that the flywheel and everything spin freely.

When you are sure that it spins freely go ahead and start to get the transmission back into place to begin lifting it back. We had two people on the bottom and one person on top with a fourth manning a jack in case we needed a break or the trans slipped. The trans will need to be rotated somewhat to get it into its correct position and also make sure that the starter motor is far enough away that it will not interfere with the installation of the transmission. If need be try and get a fifth person to spin the motor with a wrench on the pully system so that the splines line up and the trans will seat correctly. After the trans is lined up and fully seated put the two bolts on the bottom in and two bolts on top in aswell but keep the third jack inplace and make sure that it is hold the transmission while you get the rest of the bolts into place and all torqued down.

From this point you are now ready to reinstall the starter motor, the shift linkage, the clutch hydrolic linkage, coilpack, battery box, and airbox (you are now down on top of the engine) From there you can slip the axles back into their respected positions and be sure to rotate them so that you are sure they are grabbing correctly. We were able to get the axles back into the hubs by simply pulling the hubs outward and lining the axle splines up with the hub and slipping them together. Once the hubs are on correctly start the axle nuts on but only hand tight for now. put the ball joint bac into place and reinstall the pinch bolt. Rebuild the brake system by putting the rotors back on with the calipers. Put the wheels back on and refill the transmission while the car is still jacked up refill through the front plug making sure the rear plug is secure (we used Mercon V auto transmission fluid full synthetic). tighten the axle nuts as tight as you can get while the car is in this position. You probably wont be able to torque it the whole way and i'm sure that most of you wont have a torque wrench that can deal with 300 ftlbs. so this is what we did. We torqued the nuts down to 150ftlbs. which was the highest our torque wrench went too. From there we put a break bar on with a cheater bar. We measured from the center of the bolt 24 inches out and applied 130 pounds. This is equal to 260 pounds, the torque spec is 233ftlbs. After that go ahead and check all your fluids, bleed your clutch line (works just like breaks) and then take it for a spin. (we left the car on the jacks and started it up, ran it through the gears without giving it gas it wont stall the car but it will allow the transmission to run through all the gears.

I will take a look through the haynes book and make sure I didn't miss anything. It took us 1.5 days to complete the swap because we basicly did it blindly. Its not hard to do, but reaching some of the bolts is a pain in the butt, I recommend doing this on a weekend (start on a friday night to make sure you get it done on Saturday)

**hermitmaster** · 07-13-2009, 11:48 PM

That's the wrong tranny fluid, Mercon V is auto tranny fluid use Ford XT-M5-QS (about $18 a quart) you'll need 2.2 qts. if you fully drain the tranny. We just did my clutch on Saturday and it is unnecessary to pull the axles out at all, just unbolt the knuckle from the strut, unbold the tie rod end, and unbolt the sway bar end link, the axle will swing out of the way. The cradle (k-member) can also stay in, it doesn't interfere with anything. You must replace the flywheel bolts, they aren't meant to be retorqued, they are a one time use fastener.

**SaucyMuffin** · 07-14-2009, 06:14 AM

Tell that to Cory whos pushing 226 whp with the same flywheel bolts as when he had his stock clutch in. Ford said to use Mercon V and it is shifting a ton better. The K member was in the way when we did it but then again we were working off of jack stands. And removing the axles was just WAY easier for us because it took a couple of seconds.

**Spatakula** · 07-14-2009, 09:17 AM

Nice write up buddy. Sticky material fo sho!

-spatakula

**SaucyMuffin** · 07-14-2009, 12:10 PM

Thanks spat I gotta look up some of the torque specs to verify what I wrote. But here is an interesting point when it comes to lubricant for the getrag. I looked it up on here (there is a thread in the transmission section stiill) and at all the auto shops and different books. All had different answers, 10w40 motor oil, full synthetic manual trans lube, Mercon V oil. So I asked on here and someone said they called Ford directly and they told him to use Mercon V. Which is why I used Mercon V now consider this an active walkthrough I will update it as I see fit with better information. If the Mercon turns out to not be any good then I will change it.

**hermitmaster** · 07-14-2009, 01:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SaucyMuffin

Tell that to Cory whos pushing 226 whp with the same flywheel bolts as when he had his stock clutch in. Ford said to use Mercon V and it is shifting a ton better. The K member was in the way when we did it but then again we were working off of jack stands. And removing the axles was just WAY easier for us because it took a couple of seconds.

While they may be working fine in that particular case they are designed as a one time use fastener. As far as the tranny fluid goes the part number I gave is factory fill lubricant. I didn't mean to come off as a douche, you did a very good write up, I was merely pointing out a few things. We did my clutch in a garage on jack stands with two guys in about eight hours but it could've been done much faster if we gave it 100%. Initially we planned to remove the axles completely but after removing the nut and pounding on it with an air hammer it wouldn't come out of the wheel bearing so we just swung it out of the way. The k-member wasn't in the way at all though.

**svtf02red** · 07-14-2009, 03:25 PM

Nice write-up - this does need to be added to a sticky or other archive. F/W bolt replacement is take it or leave it. They truly are designed as a one-time usage fastener, but I've never heard of re-used F/W bolts failing on anyone. When I did the clutch in my VR6, I replaced the pressure plate bolts, but re-used the F/W bolts since I don't plan on doing any 3500 rpm clutch drops, and in standard VW overkill fashion, there are no less than 12 huge bolts securing the F/W to the crank. The problem comes when one of those re-used bolts snaps off while torquing it down to spec, DOH!

On the trans fluid front, I say go for testing out other products. That Ford synthetic that the SVT calls for is outrageous. A great lube, but waaay overpriced. I'm having no issues with the Amsoil synth that I replaced the Ford crap with, and the Amsoil allows much better shifting in cold temps. When I swap out the Amsoil, I'm going to send in a sample to Blackstone for analysis to put my mind at ease. So long as what you are dumping into the trans meets the specs, it shouldn't be an issue.

Smart choice on removing the axle - do not unbolt the strut, etc. unless you plan on getting you car re-aligned.

**SaucyMuffin** · 07-14-2009, 10:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hermitmaster

While they may be working fine in that particular case they are designed as a one time use fastener. As far as the tranny fluid goes the part number I gave is factory fill lubricant. I didn't mean to come off as a douche, you did a very good write up, I was merely pointing out a few things. We did my clutch in a garage on jack stands with two guys in about eight hours but it could've been done much faster if we gave it 100%. Initially we planned to remove the axles completely but after removing the nut and pounding on it with an air hammer it wouldn't come out of the wheel bearing so we just swung it out of the way. The k-member wasn't in the way at all though.

we only took the axles out because we had a puller, without that I don't think we would have gotten them out of the hub. We also greased up most of the bolt connections because most of them seemed to be a little crusty. And the K member was in our way, I don't know if you can remember but the little foot on the back of the trans was catching the member and we couldn't back the trans off the flywheel assembly enough to swing it towards the front of the engine. But if you could get it back enough and swing it forward enough then yeah you wouldn't need to drop the K member. And its not really a good idea to be hammering on your axle nuts with a hammer lol. Do yourself a favor and invest in a good puller.

**svtf02red** · 07-14-2009, 10:55 PM

Damn, I hate it when my foot gets caught on my member

**hermitmaster** · 07-14-2009, 11:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SaucyMuffin

And its not really a good idea to be hammering on your axle nuts with a hammer lol. Do yourself a favor and invest in a good puller.

We used an air hammer. There is a dimple in the tip of the axle that we placed the tip of the air hammer in so there was no potential for damage.

07-13-2009, 10:17 PM	#1 (permalink)
SaucyMuffin TEAM Member Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Dillsburg, PA Posts: 964	a better walk through for Clutch work Alright I looked up a walk through for changing out the clutch in our SVTFs and ran across a rather skippy around one I can't remember whos it was, but it was pretty bad we couldn't follow it to save our lives. So we ended up using my Haynes manual and that was pretty crappy aswell. Tools we used: T:55 Trox and assorted other sizes of Trox Metric sockets in varying drive sizes a few SAE sockets in varying sizes a 32mm socket to take off the axle nuts a hub puller (to remove the axles from the hubs) a Torque wrench (we had a dial kind Try and get your hands on one that goes to 300 ft lbs. if not get what you can) PB Blaster 3 jacks and some other sorted stuff three or more people as well New clutch, flywheel, and pressure plate (get new flywheel bolts not really needed but good to have) Mercon V automatic transmission fluid Dot 3 brake fluid (for the clutch hydro line) We started by jacking the car and removing the wheels, while two of us were taking off the wheels two others took out the battery, battery box, air box and coil pack and shift cables off of the linkage. Once we had the wheels off we removed the center caps and put the wheels back on. We used a breaker bar with a cheater bar (This is an EASY way to break your breaker arm or hurt yourself) combined with the 32mm socket and loosened both axle nuts. We jacked the car back up and took the wheels back off, the rotors and used some wire to tie up the calipers at the highest possible point on the springs of the suspension (take the brake lines off the support). After that we removed the pinch bolt on the ball joints and pulled them out. We then hooked the hub puller up putting the center point on the axle and then used the hub to hook up to the puller and we pushed the axle right out. After the axles were out of the hubs we took the u-clamp off of the passenger axle and then pulled the passenger axle out without a problem at all. When we pulled the drivers axle out we had to pry on where it entered the transmission, (watch where you pry and how hard there is an oil seal on it). Don't worry about fluid spilling out as we didn't run across any untill we drained the trans. Now is a good time to use one jack and a piece of wood to support the engine and we used a bottle jack to put under the connection of the tranny and engine. A good step to take after this would to be take all 6 of the K member bolts out and set those off to the side the member will drop quite a few inches which will give you plenty of space to pull the transmission out. With K member out you are now ready to start working on the transmission itself. Begin by taking the 3 bolts on the starter out (2 on the transmission side of it and 1 on the engine side of it) while under the car the starter is right above the catalytic converter (you might be able to better access it by removing the converter but we just reached around it and got it) after you do that use the third jack with a piece of wood and support the transmission and start taking the bolts of it make sure you take the bolt out of the Dog bone aswell (you should get two people under the transmission to help hold it up) we had a metal bar across the fender of the car with a strap hooked onto the transmission to help hold it up. Once you get all the bolts out of the trans. you can start to wiggle it back and you will feel when the splines slip out of the clutch and the trans will start to fall down. We used the third jack as a rest point/safty point in case it slipped out of our hands and also the strap to help slowly lower it down. After twisting it around alittle bit we got it out and were acutally able to just pick it up by hand and move it out from under the car by lifting up the driver side fender well. Once we had the transmission out we removed the old throw out bearing and replaced it with the new one torquing it down to the required specs (which I cannot remember those off the top of my head) we then set out to remove the clutch which we did without a problem. Now I will recommend that you pick up new flywheel bolts but we didn't use new flywheel bolts and just used the stock ones. There is a three step process to putting the flywheel on. You need to first torque all six bolts (in a diagonal pattern) to 33 ftlbs. the next step is 50 ftlbs. and the final step I believe is 80 something pounds once I get the haynes book out of my car I will be sure of that. Then the clutch disk goes on and the pressure plate and then the alignment tool. we used a screw driver to wedge into the gears of the flywheel and the block to hold it still while we torqued the pressure plate down. After all that is finally torqued down go ahead and put a wrench on the pullies on the front of the engine and spin it a few times just to be sure that the flywheel and everything spin freely. When you are sure that it spins freely go ahead and start to get the transmission back into place to begin lifting it back. We had two people on the bottom and one person on top with a fourth manning a jack in case we needed a break or the trans slipped. The trans will need to be rotated somewhat to get it into its correct position and also make sure that the starter motor is far enough away that it will not interfere with the installation of the transmission. If need be try and get a fifth person to spin the motor with a wrench on the pully system so that the splines line up and the trans will seat correctly. After the trans is lined up and fully seated put the two bolts on the bottom in and two bolts on top in aswell but keep the third jack inplace and make sure that it is hold the transmission while you get the rest of the bolts into place and all torqued down. From this point you are now ready to reinstall the starter motor, the shift linkage, the clutch hydrolic linkage, coilpack, battery box, and airbox (you are now down on top of the engine) From there you can slip the axles back into their respected positions and be sure to rotate them so that you are sure they are grabbing correctly. We were able to get the axles back into the hubs by simply pulling the hubs outward and lining the axle splines up with the hub and slipping them together. Once the hubs are on correctly start the axle nuts on but only hand tight for now. put the ball joint bac into place and reinstall the pinch bolt. Rebuild the brake system by putting the rotors back on with the calipers. Put the wheels back on and refill the transmission while the car is still jacked up refill through the front plug making sure the rear plug is secure (we used Mercon V auto transmission fluid full synthetic). tighten the axle nuts as tight as you can get while the car is in this position. You probably wont be able to torque it the whole way and i'm sure that most of you wont have a torque wrench that can deal with 300 ftlbs. so this is what we did. We torqued the nuts down to 150ftlbs. which was the highest our torque wrench went too. From there we put a break bar on with a cheater bar. We measured from the center of the bolt 24 inches out and applied 130 pounds. This is equal to 260 pounds, the torque spec is 233ftlbs. After that go ahead and check all your fluids, bleed your clutch line (works just like breaks) and then take it for a spin. (we left the car on the jacks and started it up, ran it through the gears without giving it gas it wont stall the car but it will allow the transmission to run through all the gears. I will take a look through the haynes book and make sure I didn't miss anything. It took us 1.5 days to complete the swap because we basicly did it blindly. Its not hard to do, but reaching some of the bolts is a pain in the butt, I recommend doing this on a weekend (start on a friday night to make sure you get it done on Saturday) __________________ 2003 Pitch Black ZX5 SVT #786:: Custom Magnaflow Cat Back Exhaust, AEM Short Ram Air intake, CFM race rear engine mount, Clutch Master Stage 3 clutch with light weight fly wheel, Ksport Kontrol Pro coilovers, Steeda front strut bar, gutted, carrying two full size spares, "Project hillclimb"

07-13-2009, 11:48 PM	#2 (permalink)
hermitmaster Junior Member Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Hugo, MN Posts: 72	Re: a better walk through for Clutch work That's the wrong tranny fluid, Mercon V is auto tranny fluid use Ford XT-M5-QS (about $18 a quart) you'll need 2.2 qts. if you fully drain the tranny. We just did my clutch on Saturday and it is unnecessary to pull the axles out at all, just unbolt the knuckle from the strut, unbold the tie rod end, and unbolt the sway bar end link, the axle will swing out of the way. The cradle (k-member) can also stay in, it doesn't interfere with anything. You must replace the flywheel bolts, they aren't meant to be retorqued, they are a one time use fastener. __________________ 2002 SVTF Pitch Black

07-14-2009, 06:14 AM	#3 (permalink)
SaucyMuffin TEAM Member Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Dillsburg, PA Posts: 964	Re: a better walk through for Clutch work Tell that to Cory whos pushing 226 whp with the same flywheel bolts as when he had his stock clutch in. Ford said to use Mercon V and it is shifting a ton better. The K member was in the way when we did it but then again we were working off of jack stands. And removing the axles was just WAY easier for us because it took a couple of seconds. __________________ 2003 Pitch Black ZX5 SVT #786:: Custom Magnaflow Cat Back Exhaust, AEM Short Ram Air intake, CFM race rear engine mount, Clutch Master Stage 3 clutch with light weight fly wheel, Ksport Kontrol Pro coilovers, Steeda front strut bar, gutted, carrying two full size spares, "Project hillclimb"

07-14-2009, 09:17 AM	#4 (permalink)
Spatakula Stoned Scorpion says, "GET OVER H.....OOhhh! Brownies!" Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Rälëigh, NC Posts: 10,973	Re: a better walk through for Clutch work Nice write up buddy. Sticky material fo sho! -spatakula __________________ BUY ME WHEELS

07-14-2009, 12:10 PM	#5 (permalink)
SaucyMuffin TEAM Member Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Dillsburg, PA Posts: 964	Re: a better walk through for Clutch work Thanks spat I gotta look up some of the torque specs to verify what I wrote. But here is an interesting point when it comes to lubricant for the getrag. I looked it up on here (there is a thread in the transmission section stiill) and at all the auto shops and different books. All had different answers, 10w40 motor oil, full synthetic manual trans lube, Mercon V oil. So I asked on here and someone said they called Ford directly and they told him to use Mercon V. Which is why I used Mercon V now consider this an active walkthrough I will update it as I see fit with better information. If the Mercon turns out to not be any good then I will change it. __________________ 2003 Pitch Black ZX5 SVT #786:: Custom Magnaflow Cat Back Exhaust, AEM Short Ram Air intake, CFM race rear engine mount, Clutch Master Stage 3 clutch with light weight fly wheel, Ksport Kontrol Pro coilovers, Steeda front strut bar, gutted, carrying two full size spares, "Project hillclimb"

07-14-2009, 03:25 PM	#7 (permalink)
svtf02red Wilted Cucumber Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Roseville, California Posts: 1,638	Re: a better walk through for Clutch work Nice write-up - this does need to be added to a sticky or other archive. F/W bolt replacement is take it or leave it. They truly are designed as a one-time usage fastener, but I've never heard of re-used F/W bolts failing on anyone. When I did the clutch in my VR6, I replaced the pressure plate bolts, but re-used the F/W bolts since I don't plan on doing any 3500 rpm clutch drops, and in standard VW overkill fashion, there are no less than 12 huge bolts securing the F/W to the crank. The problem comes when one of those re-used bolts snaps off while torquing it down to spec, DOH! On the trans fluid front, I say go for testing out other products. That Ford synthetic that the SVT calls for is outrageous. A great lube, but waaay overpriced. I'm having no issues with the Amsoil synth that I replaced the Ford crap with, and the Amsoil allows much better shifting in cold temps. When I swap out the Amsoil, I'm going to send in a sample to Blackstone for analysis to put my mind at ease. So long as what you are dumping into the trans meets the specs, it shouldn't be an issue. Smart choice on removing the axle - do not unbolt the strut, etc. unless you plan on getting you car re-aligned. __________________ Fordarri - There is no substitute for the ultimate driving machine, because on the zoom-zoom highway of life there are drivers and passengers. Fordarri drivers wanted.

07-14-2009, 10:55 PM	#9 (permalink)
svtf02red Wilted Cucumber Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Roseville, California Posts: 1,638	Re: a better walk through for Clutch work Damn, I hate it when my foot gets caught on my member __________________ Fordarri - There is no substitute for the ultimate driving machine, because on the zoom-zoom highway of life there are drivers and passengers. Fordarri drivers wanted.

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