328 GTS clutch change - advice please

get a HAYNES workshop manual

 

Geoff

I've got a how to for a 308, PM me your e-mail address and I'll send it over

 

Might worth posting this in the tech section. If you do attempt it I'd love to come & watch/help/gofer - I can see myself having to do this in the next 2 or 3 years.

You could ask Mike Lester at QV whether there are any specific tools required or "gotchas" to look out for. They'll take questions via their website: http://www.hamletcg.co.uk/qv/Advice.htm

I.

 

This is the link to a illustrated 308/328 clutch service procedure:

http://www.camerafilters.com/ec/clutch.htm

There's a special ring nut tool required. #FER102 available from both Baum Tools,
http://www.baumtools.com
click on the word Ferrari on their home page to see the Ferrari tools.

also Hill Engineering (Fchat sponsor) makes it. Price is around $100 last time I heard.

Search the body of posts for 'clutch' and Baum as I"m posting the tool # from memory.

 

I just did my 328 clutch a few weeks ago, so far it drives fine. I recommend the procedure shown in the above link, it is good, I couldn't get the ring nut l nut off even with the correct $100 tool, so resorted to cutting it off very carefully with a Dremel. Hopefully yours won't be so tight. One tip I would give is when you get the kit there are three o-rings to change. The lower right o-ring is very easily damaged when you put the case back on (I found out the hard way) and if you don't have a spare you are stuck until you get a new one. I strongly recommend puting the o-ring onto the shaft first beyond the shaft shoulder (the shoulder is a tight fit through the case and this is what cuts the o-ring) and then wiggle the o-ring into the undercut just before you mate the cases together. I don't use an alignment tool for the plate ( never have used one) do a trial fit with the bolts lightly snugged up so the plate can move into alignment with the splines, then remove the bell housing and tighten up the bolts ready for final installation. The locking ring nut needs to be pinched 180 degrees apart to act as the locking device, you can use a chisel but to avoid causing impacts to the system (there are bearings that will take the shock load) I used a nut splitter to make the two crimps on the nut collar with zero shock to the bearings, it worked great. In general the whole job is not too bad, a bit of a struggle to get the bell housing in and out but workable at home with just one person.

 

I just changed the clutch in my 308 last week. I followed the procedure in the link posted by VERELL, it went very smooth and I would reccomend it for anyone with average shade tree skill. There is a snap ring inboard of the bearing on the trans shaft, be sure to remove it before trying to remove the bellhousing. I also damaged an o-ring so take care with them. The whole procedure took about 6 hours.

Good Luck
Larry

 

my bellhousing/flywheel are out right now. Here's some ramblings on things that make life easier (mostly dredged from other posts...thanks verell ):

- an air impact wrench will make things a lot faster and easier....especially getting off the ring nut. To expand the locking collar on the ring nut (so it can be reused), I ground down a small chisel. Just expect that you will need some way to pry back the collar.

- to remove the lower transfer gear, I used a bolt puller. On my 328, Ferrari thoughtfully provided threaded holes in the gear:
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=37824

- long sockets extension(s) that extend outside the wheel well allow you to sip your pint while spinning off the nuts

- a "wobble" or swivel socket joint is very useful for getting to some of the bell housing nuts:
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=31203
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=5933
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=36846

- I removed the oil cooler (mounting flange was cracked, so I needed to repair it. Not sure if you can push the cooler up far enough out of the way to remove the bell housing). Make sure you use a wrench on the cooler as well as the hose fitting. If you just crank on the hose fitting, you can tear the thin aluminum on the cooler.

- The oil vapor separator canister can just get pushed out of the way once the nut is removed. On a 308, check the end of the drain hose where it attaches to the sump. Due to a sharp right-angle bend, this hose can crack and you'll find oil everywhere from the air filter box to inside the plenum - with associated impact on idle speed, emissions, burned up catalyst, oil consumption, exhaust smoke, ....

- you don't need to remove the cutout ring on the transmission input shaft (behind the bearing). The hole in the bell housing is big enough (barely) for the cutout ring to slide through. Sadly, the bh is free from the studs at this point, so you have to manhandle it a bit to line up the hole. That's also why peajay recommends not installing that o-ring first before replacing the bh, though I suppose you could remove the cut-out ring after taking off the bh and put if back after the bh is on.

- if you are going to change the pilot bearing, you'll need some kind of blind bearing puller. Many people don't change the pilot bearing or rear main seal unless they are known bad, or you have lotsa miles. I'm not changing mine at 45K, but I probably would if I had a spare bearing handy since I have a tool.

- I'm not resurfacing the flywheel...I'm in verell's camp on this topic.

- once the bell housing is off, you'll notice how accessible a couple hose couplings on a coolant pipe are. If those hoses are tatty, you will never have a better time to change them. Also, feel the back side of the pipe where it is close to touching the firewall (or a bracket or something down near the lower coupling)...you may find a hole is being worn into it where it's rubbing...

- Likewise, the exhaust air injection check valve is worth removing and hosing out with some solvent (or just replacing if your local parts store carries a bunch of GM parts). You should be able to blow through it easily in one direction, and not in the other.

- Unscrew the clutch cable adjust nut to disconnect the clutch cable. Remove the left side of the clutch adjust tie rod thing from the lever dangling down from the bell housing. You don't need to remove anything else, but remember to move the pieces out of the way of the frame rail when sliding out the bell housing.

- the bell housing is probably stuck on. Expect to need to pry. Instead of silicone, I previously used hylomar on the mating surfaces (bh and xfer case cover) and anti-sieze on the studs, and the pieces separated easily when I went back in a year later to change the pressure plate (on a 308).

- I had to remove the nut from the upper A arm and push the bolt back flush with the bushing. No need to pull the bolt completely out. Tightening torque is 40 ft/lb if they are cadmium plated bolts, or 50 ft/lb if they are galvanized bolts.

- I'm going to grind/scribe a notch in the bh to mark the magic 43mm spacing needed for the lever arm (see adjust diagram in owners manual), but in theory, once you set it up the first time you don't make any adjustments to the clutch cable for clutch wear. Mucking with the tie rod thing to keep the clutch pedal level with the brake pedal is all that is required - assuming the cable isn't stretching. However, the scribe mark is easier than trying to measure each time if you want to check for cable stretch.

- while you're under there, check the plastic pulley the clutch cable rides over. If it is crudded up so it doesn't spin, the dirt embedded in the grease will grind away the clutch cable. Gratuitous pic attached.

- as yelcab posted previously, the TO bearing will come off the carrier with a few whacks of a hammer if you don't have a press handy.

- the inside of the bh is most likely coated with oil. Don't assume a bad rear main seal. The oil likely came from spillage when removing the oil filter.

- if you remove the flywheel, scribe a line on the flyweel and the metal disc behind the bolts for easy orientation. If you don't, not a big deal since the bolt pattern is slightly asymetric and it only goes on one way. However, the flywheel is not the lightest in the world, so spinning it around while looking though the bolt holes is best avoided.

- a long 1/4" socket extension (with a bit of duct tape for the end so it fits snug into the pilot bearing), and a deep well socket (size I forget) makes a good alignment tool. Eyeballing works too, but assuming you've ingested the appropriate amount of scotch by this point, it's not as reliable.

- I've pulled bell housings three times. On all three, a segment of the large diameter o-ring on the transmission input shaft had squished out of the groove during installation, so if that happens, don't sweat it. It's not likely to leak if you used hylomar or a very thin layer of silicone.

hope something in there is useful. As others have said, it's not too bad a job.
older 308's are a little easier due to more space and the oil cooler being mounted rear of the shock, so it's completely out of the way. On the other hand, some people on early 308's had to remove the cut-out ring from the transmission input shaft to get the bh off, and that usually makes the job require much more time and alcohol.
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Phil,
I know your post is a year old, but i was under my car and my clutch cable looks the same. I will be replacing it in a week. Is it the pully itself that causes the fraying? Mine seems to catch a little as it exits the body into the front of the pully mount. The mount is very sturdy and I do not see how it could be mis-aligned.

I have read a few posts on changing the cable, and it seems straight forward, though a little intimidating. Any other helpful hints? Does the new one feed in from the rear all the way to the front?

 

On my car, the pulley was pretty much frozen and the dirt embedded in the grease acted like an abrasive. The pulley should spin freely, and it shouldn't have a flat spot ground into it. If there is a flat spot, the cable itself will prevent the pulley from turning.

The clutch cable has a sleeved section that goes from just beneath the floor pan at the clutch pedal and loops down to the tube that runs to the back of the car, and fittings are swaged onto the ends of the cable so you can't just thread a new cable into the existing sleeve.

At the back of the car, you remove the clutch cable end from the turnbuckle or just chop the cable where it's frayed. If you want to remove the cable more or less intact, you may want to remove the rubber plug on the end of the tube that the cable is routed in forward of the pulley so it doesn't get torn when pulling out the old cable. You'll probably need to pull the plug anyway when feeding the new cable in.

After that, you do everything else from the area above and below the floor pan directly beneath the clutch pedal. The basic idea is to disconnect the cable end from the clutch pedal and remove a nut so you can poke the upper end of the sleeved section and cable down through the floorpan.

Then from under the car you unscrew the other end of the sleeved section and pull the rest of the cable out.

I think you have to remove a metal panel from the bottom of the car first to get access to the sleeved part of the cable...it'll be pretty obvious when you look under there...you need access to the area directly under the front of the floor mat.

There's also at least one big round rubber plug in the bottom of the floor pan. You can pop them out to help route the cable end through the tube to the back. Some of the plugs are for the accelerator cable tube...so not those.


Also recall when putting stuff back together that you'll need to adjust the lever arm and turnbuckle on the bell housing first, and then you use the clutch cable turnbuckle to level the clutch pedal with the brake pedal. After that, when the clutch pedal is too high due to clutch wear, you're supposed to only adjust the lever arm turnbuckle - not the clutch cable turnbuckle. The adjust instructions are in the owners manual and probably in some other threads.

In theory if you're existing cable has not stretched and the adjust has always been done like ferrari says, the bell housing lever turnbuckle will already been in spec and you just need to fiddle with the cable turnbuckle. Best to check though.

hope that helps...yell if not. It'll probably make more sense when you see what the new cable looks like. My feeble memory says that you have to spin the entire sleeved section to unscrew the bottom end of it, and that's only possible once the upper end has been disconnected and removed from the hole in the floorpan.

 

Phil, great tread, very informative and the picture is great. worth a thousand words.

 

Exactly. Thanks so much, Phil. With 22 hours of daylight up here, I need to get it back on the road!

My pully spins a little, but is covered in "gunk", so I assume that is the culprit. Hopefully, when it is clean and everything is replaced, it will line up as it should. I wonder if there is a little stretch in the cable making it droop as it exits the tube before the pully.

Thanks again, Phil. You wouldn't happen to be in Anchorage next weekend, would you? Fresh salmon for a cable repair?

 

while my Y chromosome prevents me from asking for directions and only looking at maps as a last resort, even I might have difficulty taking a "short cut" that would dump me in alaska before you were done with the repair Besides, I'm so used to sleeping when it's light out that I'd only be up a couple hours a day.

The only way to really clean that pulley is to remove it from the car. It can be great fun taking that nut off the bottom of the pulley bolt/shaft.

Attached is the diagram from the parts book. You remove pin #8 to detach cable from pedal (lift the clutch pedal up...that'll lower #8 so you can get to the cotter pin more easily), then remove the clevis piece #6. The position of the clevis on the threaded rod isn't critical. Mine has the end of the rod protruding slightly through the clevis, but anything is fine as long as the rod isn't so far through the clevis to hit the pedal.

Then remove nut/washer 12/13, and you can push the top of 11 down through floorpan. Unscrew the bottom of 11 from underneath and pull out the cable. Don't forget to xfer the washer #14 to the new cable (don't ask me why I remember this )

The clutch cable is held taunt by the spring on the clutch pedal, but it may sag a bit. Shouldn't sag enough so you notice much/any free play in the cable (usual disclaimer...this applies to 328's and 308's after around 1980...earlier 308's have a different clutch pedal setup and need freeplay to avoid premature clutch wear).

The plug in the end of the tube just before the pulley should keep the cable from scraping against the end of the tube if it does sag (I think 15 in the attached pic).

Also, keep in mind that one end of the turnbuckle on the bell housing lever and one end of the cable turnbuckle is a left-handed thread, so loosen the lock nuts the right way.

When reinstalling, someone suggested sticking an oil filter or something under the clutch pedal to hold it up slightly above the brake pedal. This removes tension from the cable and makes it easy to screw the cable turnbuckle back on to about the right position. The cable mustn't twist as you screw on the turnbuckle.

I'd adjust the pedal a little high so any stretch you get in the cable initially will lower the pedal back down.

Just for reference, I got the cable from GT car parts for $70. Ferrari part number is 106745.
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Phil,
Did it last weekend. Thanks to all for the instructions. Pretty straight forward, just time consuming.

One thing I did: lightly clamp some vise grips on the cable while tightening the turnbuckle. Keeps the cable from turning from the weight of the grips.