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This is not a how-to or a guide, more of a recollection of experiences and a bit of collective knowledge to help the next unfortunate soul that decides to take on this project themselves. The forum was quite lackluster on this topic from my initial research so here's my contribution. Manual transmission for the win.
Here's my intro: I managed to shear my dual-mass flywheel in half and warp the holy hell out of my pressure plate. Apparently routinely hauling 1/3 of the vehicle weight in concrete put a significant strain on these components to the point of failure. I did not get any noise from the flywheel failure, rather a slow and steady consistent increase in vibration of the vehicle over about a 6month period of continuing to abuse my vehicle. Idle was atrocious, in gear, out of gear, all the time, eventually I could not use my mirrors because they were vibrating so badly. The vibration would vary with RPM (as the flywheel was clearly off balance and wiggling itself to death), and actually kind of balanced out around 4k rpm to the point where I was intentionally driving on the highway in a lower gear just to make it tolerable.
Exedy makes the OEM equivalent clutch kit. It is available around $700 or so. When it comes time to do your clutch (or any component of the transmission components there), don't skimp and replace one part: do the whole setup. Flywheel, clutch plate, pressure plate, and the concentric slave cylinder (CSC). It's a beeyotch to get that deep into the motor, REPLACE IT ALL. It's all designed to replaced as a package so do it once and do it right.
I chose to slightly upgrade over OEM equivalent and go with the ClutchMasters kit. They have several options depending on how serious you wanna go, but I opted for their lowest level, the FX100 paired with their single-mass flywheel. This package is right around $900 for all the parts you'll need (without fluids). It is rated for "70% over stock HP" for whatever that claim is worth. I'm just assuming that it won't wimp out as easily when I continue to haul concrete.
This project is not for the faint of heart. It's intensely involved and time consuming. I am so eternally grateful for Mr. TurboNoob who joined me for day1 of the adventure, Monday. He spent about 7 hours with me in my shop, we got the transmission housing off the vehicle, got the new parts in place, and got the housing back mounted to the engine and then he left. I put in about 4 more hours that night getting the subframe back on. About 4 hours or so the next day of random reassembly. And probably 3 hours on the final day, Wednesday, (my birthday, happy birthday to me), doing final assembly, tweaking, and touching up everything. In other words: don't rush the task, set aside appropriate time, and make sure you have food/water or at least an alternative method of transportation before starting. The AllData quote was around 9hours for a flywheel swap but I'm not familiar enough with the software to know precisely to what that 9 hours was referring. A professional mechanic, with a lift and the proper tools, I believe, would be hard pressed to complete this task in 9 hours flat. But maybe I'm wrong, idk.
Some of the highlights here:
First of all, we did this WITHOUT A LIFT. I would NOT want to take this on in a parking lot, in the sun, on an incline, or any less-desirable scenario than in a shop environment. We jacked it up nice and high, didn't use creepers, had 3 floor jacks (and a scissor jack) on hand to accompany the 4 jackstands. This made it do-able. Not easy, but certainly not cursing up a storm all day long. The tranny bell housing is clearly the delicate and heavy part. If you're doing it on the ground, you NEED a second person to safely man-handle it out and, more importantly, INTO place. It's large, awkward, heavy, and absolutely positively needs to be accurately placed. If you've got a lift, you better have a transmission jack, which will make your life go quite smoothly.
Essentially you remove damn near everything to get the tranny outta there.
--Axles are coming out, so make sure you have your 75W on hand to refill the spill upon reassembly. You're supposed to replace the axle seal gasket every time you remove the driver axle, but I fully admit I did not.
--The starter is coming out. The starter is a task upon itself. It requires removal of the intercooler setup (and thus the front lower support), and removal of a primary radiator hose, so plan on a coolant bucket for draining and then having fresh coolant on hand for reassembly -- about a gallon. The starter is a lil knucklebuster, but doable.
--Another major chore is the dropping of the subframe. You'll wanna disconnect a bunch of suspension parts to pull off that stunt but the biggest brilliant moment that I fully credit Manny with is the idea of disconnecting the rack&pinion and letting that float/hang and subframe drop away from it. AllData wants you to disconnect steering column from inside car and drop it all together but we said hell nah to that one. But understand: subframe is coming down, no way around it, and then you gotta work around the thing to get the tranny out and back in.
--Make sure you have a torque wrench on hand, the bolts for flywheel and such are all very specific in their torque and tightening sequence.
--You will also be removing parts from the top down. Essentially the battery and air intake. I chose just to pull the front bumper and driver gator light to get em the hell outta my way, but it's probably not necessary. But for the extra 15 minutes that took, I would suggest it. The goal is to get down to the transmission mount and remove that whole deal. It's a bracket bolted to the bell housing and a bracket mounted to the frame, and both will need to come off to gain clearance. Pro tip: once the tranny mount is out (and your transmission is being supported by a jack), lower it down a bit to gain easy clearance to the frame bracket bolts. I didn't learn that until reassembly.
--The clutch bleeding process is dumb and requires two people. Sidenote: don't push the clutch pedal after disconnecting the CSC. That's in bolt print, and if you do, you will spend significantly more time on the bleeding process. Once ya disconnect that CSC hose, zip tie it up outta the way so it won't routinely drip on your stuff, especially not on the flywheel while reassembling, ahem. But back to the clutch bleeding: it will need to be done and I did it with my mechanic so I cannot comment onto the complexity of it other than: it's not the best system, but, even with dumb systems, it's still doable.
As for it being a light weight flywheel for a performance advantage.... meh. I notice no change in acceleration personally. Undoubtedly, the Clutchmasters flywheel was less mass and better construction than the Nissan one it replaced. So there must be a change, but I question the impact. I was also warned that a single-mass flywheel would be 'louder' or have some noise associated with it. I disagree. It is silent. It is wonderful. It is beautiful. It's a whole new car and rides butter smooth and I am supremely pleased with the results.
For a brief while there troubleshooting and trying to make my vehicle tolerable, I went back to new stock mounts. Upon this tranny rebuild, I reinstalled my hard mounts. Filled lower and MannyMount upper. The vibration is negligible. Super tolerable. I could probably put my lower MannyMount back on and be totally fine, but have opted for the 'quieter' option for now. Replacing this flywheel solved nearly every major complaint I had about my vehicle. Happy birthday to me.
The pedal travel is SMOOTH. It's a completely different drive now. I haven't shifted aggressively yet, more focused on trying to pinpoint if I could feel any buttdyno changes across the power band. I never experienced slipping prior to this rebuild and could easily chirp tires into 2nd. I have only tried to power shift once since the rebuild and I missed my shift and just revved out and ground gears like an amateur so I decided to try later when I was a bit more sober. But keep it mind it's my bday week so that is not going to happen for a few more days.
All in all, the decision to take on this project will depend upon your income level and mechanical-inclination-level.... At least the knowledge of knowing what you're getting into will help you make a more informed decision. I always have more time than money, personally. I thoroughly enjoyed the process, actually, I had a blast, but only because I had a wonderful support crew of TurboNoob/Manny for the REAL critical parts and later on my neighborhood mechanic for the finer details. I genuinely expected a lot more to go wrong, but nothing catastrophic or major heartbreaks.
If ya got the grit, GO FOR IT!
love love,
-13-
Here's my intro: I managed to shear my dual-mass flywheel in half and warp the holy hell out of my pressure plate. Apparently routinely hauling 1/3 of the vehicle weight in concrete put a significant strain on these components to the point of failure. I did not get any noise from the flywheel failure, rather a slow and steady consistent increase in vibration of the vehicle over about a 6month period of continuing to abuse my vehicle. Idle was atrocious, in gear, out of gear, all the time, eventually I could not use my mirrors because they were vibrating so badly. The vibration would vary with RPM (as the flywheel was clearly off balance and wiggling itself to death), and actually kind of balanced out around 4k rpm to the point where I was intentionally driving on the highway in a lower gear just to make it tolerable.
Exedy makes the OEM equivalent clutch kit. It is available around $700 or so. When it comes time to do your clutch (or any component of the transmission components there), don't skimp and replace one part: do the whole setup. Flywheel, clutch plate, pressure plate, and the concentric slave cylinder (CSC). It's a beeyotch to get that deep into the motor, REPLACE IT ALL. It's all designed to replaced as a package so do it once and do it right.
I chose to slightly upgrade over OEM equivalent and go with the ClutchMasters kit. They have several options depending on how serious you wanna go, but I opted for their lowest level, the FX100 paired with their single-mass flywheel. This package is right around $900 for all the parts you'll need (without fluids). It is rated for "70% over stock HP" for whatever that claim is worth. I'm just assuming that it won't wimp out as easily when I continue to haul concrete.
This project is not for the faint of heart. It's intensely involved and time consuming. I am so eternally grateful for Mr. TurboNoob who joined me for day1 of the adventure, Monday. He spent about 7 hours with me in my shop, we got the transmission housing off the vehicle, got the new parts in place, and got the housing back mounted to the engine and then he left. I put in about 4 more hours that night getting the subframe back on. About 4 hours or so the next day of random reassembly. And probably 3 hours on the final day, Wednesday, (my birthday, happy birthday to me), doing final assembly, tweaking, and touching up everything. In other words: don't rush the task, set aside appropriate time, and make sure you have food/water or at least an alternative method of transportation before starting. The AllData quote was around 9hours for a flywheel swap but I'm not familiar enough with the software to know precisely to what that 9 hours was referring. A professional mechanic, with a lift and the proper tools, I believe, would be hard pressed to complete this task in 9 hours flat. But maybe I'm wrong, idk.
Some of the highlights here:
First of all, we did this WITHOUT A LIFT. I would NOT want to take this on in a parking lot, in the sun, on an incline, or any less-desirable scenario than in a shop environment. We jacked it up nice and high, didn't use creepers, had 3 floor jacks (and a scissor jack) on hand to accompany the 4 jackstands. This made it do-able. Not easy, but certainly not cursing up a storm all day long. The tranny bell housing is clearly the delicate and heavy part. If you're doing it on the ground, you NEED a second person to safely man-handle it out and, more importantly, INTO place. It's large, awkward, heavy, and absolutely positively needs to be accurately placed. If you've got a lift, you better have a transmission jack, which will make your life go quite smoothly.
Essentially you remove damn near everything to get the tranny outta there.
--Axles are coming out, so make sure you have your 75W on hand to refill the spill upon reassembly. You're supposed to replace the axle seal gasket every time you remove the driver axle, but I fully admit I did not.
--The starter is coming out. The starter is a task upon itself. It requires removal of the intercooler setup (and thus the front lower support), and removal of a primary radiator hose, so plan on a coolant bucket for draining and then having fresh coolant on hand for reassembly -- about a gallon. The starter is a lil knucklebuster, but doable.
--Another major chore is the dropping of the subframe. You'll wanna disconnect a bunch of suspension parts to pull off that stunt but the biggest brilliant moment that I fully credit Manny with is the idea of disconnecting the rack&pinion and letting that float/hang and subframe drop away from it. AllData wants you to disconnect steering column from inside car and drop it all together but we said hell nah to that one. But understand: subframe is coming down, no way around it, and then you gotta work around the thing to get the tranny out and back in.
--Make sure you have a torque wrench on hand, the bolts for flywheel and such are all very specific in their torque and tightening sequence.
--You will also be removing parts from the top down. Essentially the battery and air intake. I chose just to pull the front bumper and driver gator light to get em the hell outta my way, but it's probably not necessary. But for the extra 15 minutes that took, I would suggest it. The goal is to get down to the transmission mount and remove that whole deal. It's a bracket bolted to the bell housing and a bracket mounted to the frame, and both will need to come off to gain clearance. Pro tip: once the tranny mount is out (and your transmission is being supported by a jack), lower it down a bit to gain easy clearance to the frame bracket bolts. I didn't learn that until reassembly.
--The clutch bleeding process is dumb and requires two people. Sidenote: don't push the clutch pedal after disconnecting the CSC. That's in bolt print, and if you do, you will spend significantly more time on the bleeding process. Once ya disconnect that CSC hose, zip tie it up outta the way so it won't routinely drip on your stuff, especially not on the flywheel while reassembling, ahem. But back to the clutch bleeding: it will need to be done and I did it with my mechanic so I cannot comment onto the complexity of it other than: it's not the best system, but, even with dumb systems, it's still doable.
As for it being a light weight flywheel for a performance advantage.... meh. I notice no change in acceleration personally. Undoubtedly, the Clutchmasters flywheel was less mass and better construction than the Nissan one it replaced. So there must be a change, but I question the impact. I was also warned that a single-mass flywheel would be 'louder' or have some noise associated with it. I disagree. It is silent. It is wonderful. It is beautiful. It's a whole new car and rides butter smooth and I am supremely pleased with the results.
For a brief while there troubleshooting and trying to make my vehicle tolerable, I went back to new stock mounts. Upon this tranny rebuild, I reinstalled my hard mounts. Filled lower and MannyMount upper. The vibration is negligible. Super tolerable. I could probably put my lower MannyMount back on and be totally fine, but have opted for the 'quieter' option for now. Replacing this flywheel solved nearly every major complaint I had about my vehicle. Happy birthday to me.
The pedal travel is SMOOTH. It's a completely different drive now. I haven't shifted aggressively yet, more focused on trying to pinpoint if I could feel any buttdyno changes across the power band. I never experienced slipping prior to this rebuild and could easily chirp tires into 2nd. I have only tried to power shift once since the rebuild and I missed my shift and just revved out and ground gears like an amateur so I decided to try later when I was a bit more sober. But keep it mind it's my bday week so that is not going to happen for a few more days.
All in all, the decision to take on this project will depend upon your income level and mechanical-inclination-level.... At least the knowledge of knowing what you're getting into will help you make a more informed decision. I always have more time than money, personally. I thoroughly enjoyed the process, actually, I had a blast, but only because I had a wonderful support crew of TurboNoob/Manny for the REAL critical parts and later on my neighborhood mechanic for the finer details. I genuinely expected a lot more to go wrong, but nothing catastrophic or major heartbreaks.
If ya got the grit, GO FOR IT!
love love,
-13-
