roll pin victory

[gerard vaglio]

The other day my clutch pedal dropped to the floor, sheared roll pin. I've been reading about how difficult these can be to remove but I'm happy to say that I've stumbled on to a technique that yielded suprisingly good results for me without removing the pedal assembly.

Carbide drill bits. $3 each. Cuts steel like butter. Drill through the roll pin with successivly larger bits untill whats left falls out!

Maybe I got lucky but it took only a few minutes to remove it. This can only mean it will take me seven to nine hours to put the new one in.

Anyway, I thought it would be nice to share.

[surflvr911sc]

Great job and good luck on the new one!

[gerard vaglio]

It appears that declaring victory over the roll pin was premature.

When I posted last I had just finished using a cobalt drill bit to drill through the sheared roll pin that holds the clutch pedal up. I was impressed with how quickly this bit cut right through the pin. When I watched the broken end of the pin fall out the back I decided to stop working for the evening and post my success.

Well, when I went back the next day I realized that only the front, back and core of the pin was removed by the bit and a large section of the outer layer of the middle of the pin still remained fused to the pedal shaft. Unfortunately, no amount of banging or additional drilling seems to be dislodging this part.

So it appears that the pedal assembly does indeed have to be removed to remove the roll pin.

I’ll continue to fiddle with this thing but in the mean time I wanted to post an accurate update so as not to give the false impression that this is a ten minute job.

[911pcars]

You're doing this with the pedal assembly still in the car? If you're successful, you're a better man/mechanic than I. Mere mortals remove the assy. from the car where, once supported in a large vise, can yell and pound on the roll pin to their hearts content without inflicting damage to the pcar interior. Careful, the floor pan is just sheet metal that can distort with sufficiently heavy hammer blows.

Sherwood Lee
http://members.rennlist.org/911pcars

[coolbreeze]

after the pin wooped up on me i determined that the fork that the pen is set into is all of $6. i used a big screw driver and broke it open, threaded it off and moved to the transmission under the car. considering i had already spent 20 minutes trying to remove the pin in a cramped area (with out a drill running in my face) it was the best 6 bucks i ever spent.

by the way this method needs no hammer, drill or patience. its really cool that you break something on purpose instead of it breaking you.....