Clutch shaft replacement experiment

[SteveW]

Having moved on from the engine to the gearbox assembly I found that the clutch shaft and/or associated bushes were worn and therefore rattling. Having bought a new shaft, I looked at getting my local engine shop to replace the bushes. However, they didn't have a mandrel long enough to go through both bushes at the same time so could not guarantee that they would line up. At the risk of only wasting the cost of two new bushes, I decided to have a go at doing it myself. As it worked surprisingly well, I thought that I would share the method:

Step 1 - removing the old bushes. I did this by stacking lots of washers and a small socket (to act as a spacer)onto a long bolt, the washers being sized to sit against the end of the bush. At the other end, I used an oversized socket so that as I tightened the bolt, the old bush was pushed into the socket (first picture)

Step 2- reverse of the above procedure to push each new bush into the bell housing. I expected the bushes on each side of the bell housing to approximately line up, but like my engine shop, I had no way of guaranteeing that the would do so well enough to allow the new clutch level to be pushed through. However, I knew that the ID of the new bushes would be slightly too small, so I would have a small margin to play with to ream them into line.

Step 3 - This is where luck (or innovation if you are being kind) comes in. The diameter of the clutch lever on a TC is 5/8". In metric this is 15.876mm. Standard UK copper plumbing pipe OD is 15mm and I have some scrap. The smaller OD means that it will just slot through both bushes at the same time with enough spare diameter to wrap a single thickness of wet and dry paper around the ends (second picture). By spinning this with an electric drill I was able to ream the bushes to the right ID and keep them in line. I now have a close fitting new lever arm without the rattle.

[SteveW]

Just as a follow up, it was a real pain getting the taper pins out. When I assemble, is there any reason why I couldn't tap the holes and use grub screws instead of taper pins?

[Ray White]

Just as a follow up, it was a real pain getting the taper pins out. When I assemble, is there any reason why I couldn't tap the holes and use grub screws instead of taper pins?

I think that is fairly common practice. I did same with mine but added a drop of Loctite.

[Steve Simmons]

Very timely post. I'm facing this job on TC7018 very soon. I've been wrestling with how to line bore the bushings accurately. I think my local machine shop can handle it, but if not then I will be pursuing some clever means of doing it. I thought of simply using a piloted reamer, doing one side at a time sort of like doing kingpins. But it would need to be fairly long to work.