Turbo clutch job

The turbo needed to have it’s clutch changed.

The first order of business was to make some room:

In the turbo there’s a bit of intake tubes and hoses to remove…

The clutch assembly and the slave cylinder were pretty much shot. No wonder the clutch felt crap:

To remove the housing the splines need to be compressed and a circular tool inserted between them and the housing. This will release the tension between the slave and the clutch. They will then slide out together.

There are some special tools for the job but ofcourse we don’t have any of those 😀

At first I tried to put in a piece of brake tube (dad pushing on the clutch pedal):

But it wasn’t quite thick enough to relieve the tension and I couldn’t get the clutch out. I could have tried a thicker tube/wire but the slave and pressure bearing were so bad they didn’t push the splines far enough.

It was far easier to use another tool – an angle grinder 😀

That got the job done in no time (besides there’s no reason to use the old assembly so it’s scrap anyway).

The next step is to remove the flywheel bearing. You can use an extractor tool for it, we had this simple tool that dad made:

It can also be used for extracting the clutch shaft.

Time to put in a new bearing:

A couple of big sockets and an iron bar does the job just fine.

So – why not remove the flywheel for this job? Because to get the flywheel out you need to remove the starter, and to get to the starter rear mount you need to remove the throttle body and stuff…

Remember to lube the relevant places:

Time to put the new clutch housing, slave cylinder and pressure bearing in.

The procedure is similar to the extraction, but ofcourse in reverse order. Apply pressure to the splines and insert the round tool or a piece of tubing or wire between them and the housing. A piece of fuel line (8 mm thick) works fine.

The assembly then slides into place “with ease” 😀 (Well, never easily, you still need some juggling to get it in there).

Done.

Remove the wire, connect the hydraulic hose, and bleed the system thoroughly untill you see clear liquid coming through.

There’s a pretty good walkthrough for the job at http://www.thesaabsite.com/900old/c900clutchrepair.htm