did you release the throw out bearing from either the pressure plate fingers or the bearing fork. I don't think you did because in your picture the slave cylinder still appears to be in place.

 

Bruh, no one likes to chase threads.
Either you missed a couple bolts or you need to release the clutch fork.
Put the upper fourth bolt through the rear mount back in. That will support the engine while you pull the trans.
On the rear mount if you follow the circular outlay of the bolts that attach the mount to the diff, to the left of those is another bolt that goes into the trans from the engine. It's hard to see with the oil filter and the intake manifold stay in place.
Hard to see, did you remove the bolt below the clutch fork?

 

First things first, I'm so grateful to forums and the people that contribute; thanks a bunch; it's great!
So at this very moment I have the transmission housing "separated" from the engine housing (boy did that take a lot of effort; at one point I thought I was SOL) and there's now a gap between the two, enough to get fingers in between. The issue now is that I'm still unable to get the two completely separated even though there is a finger gap between them and the two alignment pins ( fairly large) that are half way up either side of the joint are indeed completely freed. Funny thing is, that the transmission housing (with the gearing bulge side) facing towards the firewall wants to drop, but the transmission housing side facing towards the front of the car does not want to budge down (well initially it did drop ~1/4" from mated height).

From reading what Schreps and Mad_Mike are saying above, it looks like I may have found the reason for my issue. I need to do something with the clutch fork in order to release something inside the transmission so it can drop, right? I just hope I haven't damaged anything inside the transmission housing because of my missteps so far. I'm guessing that I can just yank that clutch fork out at this point in time so that the thing can drop? I'm going to give that a try in a bit, but before I do that I'll give the internet a search to see if there's anything about doing this step correctly.









Salute,
Davesmit

 

First things first, I'm so grateful to forums and the people that contribute; thanks a bunch; it's great!
So at this very moment I have the transmission housing "separated" from the engine housing (boy did that take a lot of effort; at one point I thought I was SOL) and there's now a gap between the two, enough to get fingers in between. The issue now is that I'm still unable to get the two completely separated even though there is a finger gap between them and the two alignment pins ( fairly large) that are half way up either side of the joint are indeed completely freed. Funny thing is, that the transmission housing (with the gearing bulge side) facing towards the firewall wants to drop, but the transmission housing side facing towards the front of the car does not want to budge down (well initially it did drop ~1/4" from mated height).

From reading what Schreps and Mad_Mike are saying above, it looks like I may have found the reason for my issue. I need to do something with the clutch fork in order to release something inside the transmission so it can drop. I just hope I haven't damaged anything inside the transmission housing because of my missteps. I'm guessing that I can just yank that clutch fork out at this point in time so that the thing can drop? I'm going to give that a try in a bit, but before I do that I'll give the internet a search to see if there's anything about doing this step correctly, but I'm afraid that there may not be reliable or the exact information I'm looking for already on the web.




Cheers,

Dave

 

If you've got a little corrosion on the tranny-to-block dowel pins, it can put up a hell of a fight.

Have you tried using a pointed chisel to try and open up the gap? If you can open up a little space, locate the pins and squirt a little PB blaster in there.

I helped a friend go a clutch on a '97 Camry V6. We had to GENTLY drift the gap open with a chisel, then pry the tranny off the pins to get it away from the engine. After 20 years of being assembled, they just weren't interest in parting company.

 

remove the slave cylinder if its still attached, remove the clutch fork boot (9), look inside with a flashlight, should be a clip like spring (8) that holds the folk (6) in position relative the fork pivot (7) (see the drawing in link below). try to remove the clip (8). then you should be able to wiggle the fork (6) free from the throw out bearing (5). you may have to put the trans and engine back together for this to work.

https://www.hondaautomotiveparts.com...clutch-housing

 

If you have the trans that far pulled back without letting the clutch fork release the clutch it's most likely the splined shaft is jammed on the clutch disc splines, which is locked in from the pressure plate.
Actuate the clutch fork and the trans will most likely relase and the trans will be free to move.
Don't le the trans hang on its own. The input shaft/pilot is longer than the pilot bushes and you can bent the tip of the shaft if not careful. Which will cause vibrations once everything is put back together.

 

Mike, Can the pressure plate bolts can be removed thru the starter hole??? I'm wondering if the throw out bearing is attached to the pressure plate, I have seen some exedy pressure plates with this kind of captured bearing. But I agree most likely the shaft splines are binding in the clutch disk.

 

Possibly, but it would not be a graceful.
Two problems with that.
1. you would need to rotate the crank to get to each bolt, in this current configuration of half-***'d setup the trans is probably not going to be a willing participant.
2. pressure plate will need to be unbolted in a way that would not cause any further binding of the clutch components(unlikely) That PP is gonna be pushing off the flywheel, even if you can get the majority of the bolts off and somehow, through sheer will power, get the PP to not to wreck your **** as they say. Everything will release at once and probably collapse in a pile on your foot.

Best to just try pressing against the clutch fork or throwout bearing to release the clutch disc so it all comes apart a bit more gracefully.

 

If Mikes method doesn't work you will have to go after the pressure plate bolts and if possible remove the fork. At that point it has to come apart. And as Mike said dont wreck your **** by letting the trans drop out of alignment when it comes loose. since your replacing the clutch bigly spray the shaft thru the fork hole with pbblaster, it might loosen up the shaft splines.

 

Oh boy oh boy this is turning out to be much more than I bargained for. I'm still unable to drop the entire tranny housing because it very well looks like the transmission shaft has not completely separated from the clutch plate. I think this is because as Mike_Mad stated earlier QUOTE["[color=left=#000000]The input shaft/pilot is longer than the pilot bushes and you can bent the tip of the shaft if not careful. Which will cause vibrations once everything is put back together" END QUOTE].
So that extra length on the transmission shaft that rides the pilot bushing of the flywheel is probably not clearing the clutch plate. I can see why because there is no more room to push the transmission straight out as I'm hitting the car frame (see photo below) thus far I've only been able to push the transmission back about a good 1 inch from the engine housing. I pretty sure that the splined part cleared the clutch plate because the tranny has been pulled back a good 1 inch and that is about how much the clutch plate's female spline depth is.

Funny thing is that when I press the clutch fork with my hand (to engage it) it feels very sloppy with no resistance no matter how I move it. I can move that clutch fork back and forth and all very sloppy feel and the fork does not seem to be out of place. I've peaked inside via the clutch fork opening with the help of a headlight and mirror and I could see the throwout bearing touching the pressure plate but that's about it I cannot not make out anything else and that throwout bearing seemed to just touch without force. So I don't see how I can possibly "...just try pressing against the clutch fork or throwout bearing to release the clutch disc so it all comes apart a bit more gracefully."

It looks to me that the only option now is to tilt the engine enough to get the transmission to clear the car frame (see photo below). That way I have plenty of room to push that tranny as far back as I need for the tranny shaft to get clear off the clutch and pressure plate. The far end of the tranny that's by the car frame would clear it if it were a mere 1.5" lower (see photo below). Getting the engine housing to tilt a reasonable amount is going to be tricky by the looks. I'm not looking forward to it...sigh. I see videos of people in the internet dropping their tranny and they make it look easy and no mention of tilting the engine housing, or maybe they did and just not mention it. There just ain't much room in there to pull the tranny straight out enough to then be able to drop it. Hopefully, its not going to be super complicated to tilt the engine a few degrees without causing damage to anything.

 

 

Update:
Hey Schreps, I took your advice as well and sprayed PB blaster and then even DW40 all over the pressure plate and shaft via the fork opening and via the gap between the tranny and engine housing. It's all or nothing; might as well go all out! I then decided to try for the first time to turn the crank pulley CCW and to my surprise it turned without much effort (of course I had to overcome the compression strokes). This tells me that the tranny shaft is not bound up, but the problem still remains in that there is no more room to move the tranny back to get the shaft out far enough to drop the tranny unless I do crazy engine tilt which sounds like it may be hard to do.

I'm starting to wunder if I'll ever be able to drive the car again.

 

Sorry for the delay was on the west coast for a few days. Mad Mike must be finishing his shopping. So now you dont have enough room to slide it apart? You have something going on with mounts or brackets not letting it drop.

this vid is a classic how to:
and not great but scotty shows there should be plenty of room
per the videos you should be able to tilt the engine slightly and pull it apart. have you taken the wood cross support you show in your initial post out? looks like you have a cable around the engine or transmission. take all that stuff out, put a jack under the engine so you can tilt it. then wiggle the crap out of it. if all that fails unbolt the pressure plate from the flywheel by going thru the starter opening.

It could be the pilot bearing pulled out of the crank but is still stuck on the end of the transmission shaft. this would prevent the shaft from sliding out of the clutch disk. So in that case you have to remove the pressure plate bolts.

Where are you located? maybe someone on this forum is close by.

 

I'm getting some help tomorrow from brother! We gonna get that tranny out I promise! With all the info and help I've gotten including this forum there is nothing stopping me now! For sure the engine will be tilted to get more room to slide the tranny straight out. I'll update my progress once I have the new clutch kit components installed.

Wish me luck!

Dave

 

great, show us what ya got !!!

 

 

Some more photos. The rear main sea looked good to me so I decided not to change it. Due to oil pan shape the engine is now tilted a few degrees. The engine is supported only by the jack on the oil pan as you can see and the remaining engine mount by the timing belt.

Just for giggles, I took a photo of the "port" where the passenger side halfshaft fits into. It's neat to look in there!

 

Nice job.

 

Car still on the support jacks. The manual transmission housing has been bolted back to the engine housing thanks to a crew of four people! It worked! Unfortunately, afterwards during the process of installing the left transmission mount I forgot about the scissor jack I placed underneath the transmission housing there (left side edge, the mount located right above). This is relevant because the engine needed to be lowered about 3/8" to get the left mount's cross bolt to lineup with the mount hole. So I lower the engine via the floor jack under the oil pan. This causes the transmission to lower about 1/8" but then no more. I'm confused as to why no more lowering and that's when I realize about the scissor jack left under the transmission housing at the far left end. I then proceed to remove this scissor jack which had great pressure on it (I could feel the resistance when lowering the jack). In doing so it caused the transmission to drop another 3/8" or so. Now I hope that I did not damage anything internally in the transmission or perhaps bend the tranny shaft? All this work and I F things up right at the end.

I'm such an #@%$...not paying attention!

Dave.

 

Nothing can get bent if the trans is bolted to the engine. You wont damage anything unless you drop it. Keep going, no worries