Jim Mowreader

Tale of woe that's about to have a decent ending:

I got my 86 Accord on the road. Lots of power, real smooth, everything
great. Even did a little freeway driving--about 100 miles to South
Carolina and back. Love the moonroof; wish I had discovered those before!

Two days after I got back from South Carolina, I got in the car to go to
work. On the way down I stopped off at the supermarket for a muffin. It
won't go into gear? This isn't so good! Finally I did get it into the
parking lot. I also got it the rest of the way to work.

Okay, let's see...engine runs good. When I can get it into gear the
transmission works good. Must be the clutch.

Two weekends ago I got the car home and started working on it. Talk
about a comedy of errors!

Let's see...get out the Haynes and do all the steps down to "loosen
drive axle nuts." Leaf, leaf, leaf..."this step must be done with the
tires on the ground." Take car off jackstands and loosen drive axle
nuts. Loosen lug nuts. Jack car back up. Remove said nuts.

"Detach lower control arms from ball joints" should read "Stand back and
watch as ball joints laugh at mechanic's feeble attempts to unhook
them." Tried every tool I had. Finally borrowed a pickle fork and a ball
joint replacer. Bought two new ball joints. Now have unhooked lower
control arms and new ball joints. Bonus!

"Remove drive axles." Slid right out. Starting to get suspicious.

"Unbolt engine from transaxle." Remove seven million bolts.

Decide Mr. Honda's brother-in-law must be in the vacuum hose business.

"Make sure all of the bolts are removed." Discover one nut that refuses
to come out. It is a 17mm nut that holds a engine-to-transmission
bracket in place. It is tightened to approximately five thousand lb/ft
torque. I removed the top bolt and will worry about removing this nut
later.

"Remove transaxle from car." Finally! It's down!

(Quick question: there are two 5mm-or-thereabouts hoses coming off the
top of the transmission toward the back side of the car. They, of
course, pulled off, dripping oil all over my garage floor. What is at
the non-transmission end of these hoses? I have them marked as to which
fitting they hook to.)

"Unbolt pressure plate." I used my floor jack as a flywheel lock.

"Remove pressure plate and clutch disc from car and inspect." There is
absolutely no friction material on the pressure plate side of the clutch
disc. The only thing making the car go down the road were the rivets
that are supposed to hold the friction material on. There ain't a whole
lot more of it on the flywheel side. No wonder it wouldn't move!

"Clean flywheel with brake system cleaner. There must be no oil on the
flywheel." I have a gallon of Bestine rubber cement thinner. It is
heptane based and works well for this.

"Remove clutch from package and clean friction surface of pressure
plate." Bestine again.

"Use special little tool they give you to align clutch disc on
flywheel." Done.

"Attach pressure plate." 19 lb-ft isn't as much torque as I'm used to,
but then again .004" isn't as much spark plug gap as I'm used to either,
and that's what Honda wants. So give it 19 lb-ft.

Now I'm at "install new release bearing." There's a little spring that
holds the release bearing in place, and the ears on that spring have
worn off. No problem. Stop off at the Honda dealer after work and get a
new one.

Still working...

--jmowreader