I just removed my tranny for a clutch replacement using this thread. First I want to say Thank you!! This helped a ton.
There were some snags I ran into, they may help people doing this in the future:
- In the beginning of your thread you label the drain bolt as 22mm, I bought a 22mm socket and had to go get a 24mm (could not find a 23mm socket, 24 worked perfectly though).
- The bolt for the control arm ball joint would not come out. I got the nut off fine but the bolt was so rusted in there it would not budge. In the end I had to drill the head of the bolt off. This was by far the largest problem I ran into.
- I had a couple nuts/bolts strip on me very easily, the metal was so worn it was like lead (115k miles and it's in New Jersey, lots of corrosion). I picked up a set of Craftsman Damaged Bolt Removing Sockets and they did the job, I would highly recommend getting these for this, if it's anything like my case you will strip quite a few nuts/bolts.
- I stupidly saved the top two 12mm bolts on the tranny housing for last, do NOT do this, both bolts snapped in half while removing them.
- After taking off the motor mounts my motor dropped about 4inches. This will make it impossible to get the tranny over that round black bar. You will have to lift the engine back to it's original height to remove the transmission.
All in all it went very well, this was my first clutch job and I couldn't have done it without this thread, thanks again!
Transmission removed: