Clutch Job - reassembly problem

[cduke]

Sorry it's so long but the situation is odd:

I just got the bellhousing on and did my motor mount job and was trying to put the torque tube back onto the bellhousing but it won't advance beyond about 1/2" from the bellhousing. I am thinking that the pilot bearing is not lining up with the drive shaft. Is there any way to align them????

All of the manuals I'm following don't mention a problem here and I'm wondering if any of you have run into problems with this.

I was trying to move that last 1/2" for over an hour and finally pulled it onto the bell housing with the bolts with no problem. I then noticed that the torque tube may have moved without the drive shaft within.

1: How much force should be required to get the pilot bearing around the drive shaft?

2: Could I have just messed something up by pulling the torque tube to the bellhousing with the 4 bolts?

Thanks for any help or tasteless comments about my lack of mechanical prowess :-P

Charlie

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1985.5 944 N/A

[Scott R]

Hook the slave cylinder up and have an assistant push the clutch pedal down. This will release the tension on the disc and alow the shaft to insert more freely. Had the same problem on mine and this worked great! Slid right in! Old mechanics trick for stabbing transmissions.

[lordgrommit]

I did mine with the bolts kind of scary but worked ok for me

Matt

[lm6y]

Could be bad news. You may have ruined the bearings in the torque tube. They make a special tool for this, it's called a clutch alignment tool, or a pilot shaft tool. Did you use one? If not, spend the few bucks to get one.

It can be a pain in the rear to get them aligned properly. But, I would move the torque tube back, and spin it to see if the bearings in it are O.K. Then i would look at the pilot bearing to make sure you didn't damage it either. It will take awhile to disassemble everything to check, but it's still better than if you got it all back together.

ScottR's idea works great too!

[rwsams]

Scott's got the right answer. It's just not quite lined up. The clutch slave cylinder will do the trick. Same thing happend on mine.

rws
87 924s

[cduke]

It's done! I just drove the car around for about an hour!
I took the torque tube back off and checked the bearings. I used a dentist's mirror to look down through the clutch to see that the pilot bearing looked just fine. I had used the clutch alignment tool but i didn't grease the inside of the pilot bearing i think.
Regardless, I checked to see that the pilot bearing was still in the proper place by putting a stripe of MoS2 grease on the clutch alignment tool (the part that inserts into the pilot bearing) and noted the smearing of the grease by the pilot bearing. After lubricating the drive shaft a bit it slid right in and worked well.

Thanks for all of the help and advise!!!