Sponge Bob Clutch Problem Resolved

I used my fancy new tool and removed the remaining shock absorber. It worked perfectly. :)

I pulled the engine and saw that the throwout bearing had not, as I had suspected, jumped off the fork. Instead, I saw that the collar on the pressure plate had been ground off.

Some pieces of metal were recoverable, but mostly, there was a lot of shiny dust and a funky "burned barbecue" smell. The inside of the bell housing was coated with oil. My first thought was that the seal on either the engine or the transaxle was leaking.

None of the oil looks fresh, however. I recall that when the oil cooler event occurred, the top of the engine and transaxle were pretty much drenched in oil and I think that's where it came from.

The throwout bearing itself had not jumped the rails, but you could tell that the surface didn't look right.

Turns out that the bearing was not turning and the collar from the pressure plate had friction welded to the bearing race!

You can see the bearing race is completely hidden. For the entertainment value, I will see what forensic data I can gather and report back.

It's no wonder the bearing failed, what with the inner race being off center and the balls scrambled inside the bearing.













I found that AutoZone carries the throwout bearing, for $37. They are about $15-18 at most places. AutoZone isn't usually that high on any given item.

More importantly, while I have a new pressure plate leftover from the other trike, it looked like replacing the disk would be a good idea, what with all that oil. The disk also had a slightly strange wear pattern on it, seeming to wear most in a circle that would describe the center of the friction material. The contact side of the otherwise ruined pressure plate looked fine, but obviously it had to go.

AutoZone has a clutch kit which contains the clutch disk, pressure plate, throwout bearing, pilot bearing and a (redundant) pilot alignment tool. This whole assembly is $102 *and* carries a lifetime warranty. So I got one.

Nothing very magical about the installation from this point forward. I scraped as much of the slightly sticky dust off the flywheel as I could and vacuumed it away. Then I used a bunch of brake cleaner to ensure that the flywheel was clean and oil-free. After the brake cleaner, the pilot bearing needed grease.

Then I put the disk and pressure plate on and snapped a picture of it:

Looks like pretty much every other clutch, huh? :)

It took pretty much a whole can of brake cleaner to get the bell housing clean. I found a few recognizeable bits of metal from the old pressure plate in there. I installed the new throwout bearing. Now that I've done it a few dozen times, I can remove and install the spring clips with minimal bloodletting.

Bolted the engine and transaxle back together and before I continued, I verified that the clutch will disengage. That was a problem with the Dragon trike's clutch and I wanted to make sure the same thing didn't happen here before I finished bolting up everything else and had to pull it out again!

I ran out of time and will need to finish the rest of it tonight.