[Vwdiesel] Clutch pain

[Shalyn Shourds]

Most of the pain is what I'll be feeling tomorrow and the day after and probably the day after that.  I'm a competitive athelete and I train really hard.  Sadly, only the legs.  Working on cars only uses the legs to keep my pants inflated.  

I've never had to fight so hard to get a part out as I did that transmission.  ('00 Jetta)  As near as I can tell, it's basically impossible to get out with the left driveshaft in the car.  Maybe in ideal shop conditions, but in a driveway with two trolley jacks to move the engine and tranny, no can do.  Even with that out, there's a tiny sweet spot where the transmission is high enough to clear the right CV flange and low enough to clear the left one.  Took a very long time to find that.  

Once out, the first thing I noticed was the retaining clip on the throwout bearing was in about 6 pieces.  Not sure what affect that may have had, but probably not a good one.  The clutch disk and the
 two metal bearing surfaces looked normal and intact, though all were worn.  I will have to measure some time later when I have energy.  The pressure plate was almost to the heads of the rivets.  The clutch had a tiny bit left before it got to the bottom of the grooves on the surface.  

The potential big problem is the part where the two layers of the flywheel got out of phase.  The heads of the flywheel bolts are slightly obscured by the top layer of flywheel.  I'm hoping that I can still force the triplesquare bit in there and get those out.  Elsewise, I'll be spending a whole lot of time with a tiny little Dremel grinding making it to where I can get it in there.  


Needless to say, after having so much trouble getting the tranny off, I'm really dreading putting it back in and getting it aligned.  And it's supposed to storm here tomorrow.  May have to rent a car to get to work Monday.  Not ideal.  I'm also still waiting on a rear mainseal.  Ordered that from Autohaus AZ Tuesday and still don't have any tracking data on the UPS website.  On the same Tuesday, I ordered the flywheel, etc. from DieselGeek and I had it on my doorstep <24 hours later.  Granted, they're only about 6 hours south of me, but I was still impressed.  

If anyone had tips on dealing with the flywheel mess or getting that tranny back on that year Jetta, I'd be most appreciative.  

-Shalyn