Throw out bearing replacement

I did it guys!!

It took me 12.5 hours, but I managed to drop my transmission and swap out the throw out bearing with an oem one, and the annoying squeak is gone. I couldn’t tell you how I managed to mate the transmission back to the engine… it was basically blind luck, and it took me almost 2 hours, even with the truck on a lift and using a pretty nice transmission jack.

The funnest part was realising that the bell housing was missing 3 of the 6 bolts, the starter was missing 1 of 2, the cross member was missing 1 of 4, and the 4x4 drive shaft was missing 1 of 4 nuts.

Am I a real car guy now?

 

You have more guts than most. Awesome repair.

 

Or maybe just less money

 

Did you change the clutch??

Was the clutch release bearing bad??

 

nope. Everyone told me to swap the clutch, flywheel, and pilot bearing while I had it open, but I am an idiot, and all that had been replaced two years ago, so I figured I’d roll the dice.

the old TOB was doing that chirping thing people talk about, and when I pulled it out it had a noticeable wobble/looseness when I spun it around.

 

You did at least inspect the clutch disc?

I installed new clutches with only 10,000 miles

The old one was saved if i ever had an emergency and could not wait.

I really hope your luck is better then mine.

 

Was that an OEM bearing? Original or replaced 2 years back with the other parts?

 

Well done! Pulling and replacing the transmission is straight forward but involves so many steps. Good on you doing the work yourself. Just think of how much coin you saved and the experience gained.

 

Frankly, I didn’t even look past the fingers. At least when I’m forced to do a full on clutch job I’ll be a little faster at pulling it apart. I guess I didn’t feel very motivated to open it up because the clutch feels fine.

 

I don’t think it had an oem bearing in it. I’ll attach a picture and you can see the difference for yourself. It was installed two years ago when the previous owner put in a clutch kit from o Reilly’s.

 

I’m looking forward to digging into all the other issues this truck has. More stuff is broken than works. I ended up paying about 240 dollars all told for the new bearing and renting the lift/bay at the auto hobby shop on base for 12 hours.

 

That is a low cost lift/bay rate!
Something like that would take 600$ out of my pocket at 12 hours

 

I know it brother. I had always known about it, but never used it until yesterday, and it was amazing. For 14 bucks an hour you get full access to the lift and a stocked auto shop. They had every tool I needed, and even a couple cranky old mechanics that just walked around helping people trouble shoot. It’s a really great resource for military guys.