Hello all,

Anyone did a clutch replacement on their manual Fit yet? How many miles was it? How much was it? I'm close to 110,000 miles now. I feel like it is wearing out as it takes the pedal to catch at a higher height than before. Clutch pedal making little squeaky sounds, so I think that's another sign too. Not sure when it really needs to be replaced too, maybe when I can't move the car? lol

 

Replaced mine at 80,000 miles.

Started slipping badly.

Now with 121,600 miles clutch is still good.

 

How much did that cost? I have 65K on mine, so far so good, but long term a manual is more expensive than an automatic I believe (sample of one, but I have 372,000 miles on an automatic still running perfectly). Back in the day, slapping a new clutch in a RWD was a nothing burger, an easy job and cheap, but FWD sounds expensive.

 

your sample of one is amazing but i have always bought manuals because 1) it was initailly cheaper 2) if something DOES go wrong its not a hydraulic maze ...literally.....to fix...a few bearings and syncros, not a maze of hyraulics, solenoids,filters.maybe today its a wash...if you could even BUY a manual car!...not a huge fan of CVT...simple....BUT....sooooo 212,OOO kms on 99 manual civic i bought brand new. no new clutch,,,ever...if you drive RIGHT you may get CLOSE the that autos milage...BUT...they probably do not make clutches like they use to either...lol..the squeky sound doenst mean the clutch is wearing out....do we have a manual adjuster for travel?.....ive never looked into that!!...back in the day they did....as the clutch wore, you adjusted the rod to the cylinder to compensate for that (the freeplay)

 

That was more of a manual clutch (cable or rod linkage actuation) thing. Modern hydraulic clutches self-adjust for wear. There is an adjustment between the pedal clevis and MC pushrod, but that's more of a pedal-height adjustment.

 

Thanks...Bobski...i might have been thinking of the 1973 toyota corolla now you mention it, it had a cable operated clutch

 

My '91 CRX has a cable operated clutch, with a manual adjustment at the transmission cable bracket. Civics went hydraulic clutch in '92.

 

Isn't @Pyts doing his clutch?

 

Mine took about 6 hours with screwing off half the time. Subframe doesnt need dropped. In and out is easy peasy.

Replaced mine at approx 212k due to TOB & pilot bearing noise. Still had another 30k left. Don't forget to machine or replace flywheel. If the flywheel has too much material removed they can throw codes...same weight flywheels only.

 

Thank you, I will keep it in mind.

 

A few suggestions from my experience:

unless you are pretty experienced and don’t 100% rely on your car for, say… getting to work, think twice about DIY. I regretted my decision on my first gen and I don’t know about the GK but the GD has three of four engine mounts on the transmission. Once the tranny is out and your engine is on a jackstand and something goes wrong, I was in a world of pain. I ended up needing to call a buddy and rent a transmission jack. Couldn’t get the rear mount on so I ended up having to drop the subframe. GE and GK rear mounts are 1000x easier but still, think about it.

a few suggestions :

-definitely replace or resurface the flywheel. My GD clutch was slipping while the disk was still in good shape because the previous mechanic figured the flywheel was fine. Nope, the groove in my flywheel must have been 10-20 thou deep so that’s for sure why it was slipping.

-excedy kit is nice but my throwout bearing had one of its ears snapped clean off. Coulda been user error from my last boneheaded mechanic but also, I’ve heard that it might be worth buying a better TOB than the one that comes in the kit. I mean, the Exedy kit is like 150$ so it can’t be a super TOB.

-the plastic alignment tool in the kit is pretty cheesy. Metal tools exist and they are certainly better. You gotta make sure there isn’t any drag at all in the plastic tool because it does have some flex to it.

-if you replace the axle seals, do not tap them all the way in or you will get leaks. There is supposed to be a gap behind the seal so it has to be inserted flush but not seated all the way in.

-I used the bread trick to remove the pilot bearing and it works well.

-while you are in there, you might as well replace the rear main seal. Certain main seals require grease and others don’t so research the material of your seal. Rear main seal is hard to remove and they make a tool for that, or you can screw in some wood screws and pull with pliers.

for the gd, you need two sizes of 12 point sockets. I think it was 8 and 10mm or 12mm. Double check.

exedy calls for blue Loctite on the pressure plate bolts. A good idea for peace of mind.

you can insert one of the bell housing bolts into the engine and wedge a double sided wrench between one of the flywheel pins and the bolt to keep the crank from spinning while you torque the pressure plate. I torqued my pressure plate in about 3 steps, gradually increasing torque to make sure it was properly seated.

when inserting the input shaft splines into the clutch disk, you can have a buddy use a wrench on the crank pulley to slowly spin the crank to make sure you are able to insert the splines. Even the slightest misalignment will clash the splines and create metal burrs making it hard or impossible to reinstall the transmission. do not hang the transmission from the input shaft once it’s in. Make sure it is supported until you can get at least one bolt threaded in. It takes some force to get the transmission onto the dowel pins, you might grease them slightly beforehand.

I recommend a cheap replacement cotter pin kit with tiny pins, since my shift cable linkage cotter pins were rusted to oblivion when I pulled them out. I replaced the metal disks and plastic washers on my shift cable linkage clevices because they were rusty and worn.

a hand pump can be bought for cheap on Amazon to help refill the transmission fluid. Definitely worth it. I wouldn’t bother replacing the fill plug washer but the drain plug washer is the same part as the oil drain plug crush washer and I would replace that. Amsoil synchromesh performs better in very cold climates but Honda MTF is great too.

a clutch job is not for the faint of heart and you’d best know what you are doing. Good luck.

PS before you embark on the journey of replacing your clutch, my test for clutch slippage is to get up to rolling speed and shift up from say 2nd right to 4th and floor it. If you can get the revs to jump up, clutch is slipping and needs replacing. If the engine lugs and doesn’t really accelerate, then you know you are still making good clamping force.

 

I've never done a clutch job on FWD car. As I understand it, RWD is easier, like a BRZ I did it with.

Just my opinion on hand-pump for transmission fluid fill. I personally just use a long tube attached to a funnel and fill from the top. I think it's "neater" that way.
I do have a hand-pump, but the last time I used it was to refill a rear diff. I couldn't do gravity fill (funnel + tube) because there wasn't a hole in the trunk (LOL).

I agree on the throw out bearing note. If I were to spend extra $$$, that's the one piece I would.

 

@MTLian That's helpful. Thank you.

 

... scrolling through and checking for interesting threads.

^ that's interesting, thanks.


current status here:
2017 gk5 (unmodded)...
* purchased with ~34 miles, currently at ~203,000 miles
... original clutch, still doesn't slip.

 

It's the feathering/slipping part of operation that puts wear on a clutch. A car driven stop-and-go on the hilly streets of San Francisco will wear a clutch out exponentially sooner than a rural highway cruiser. It would be more useful to look at how many dragging-revolutions of slip a clutch can endure in its lifetime.

 

100% agree.

However (aside from unlivable places like SF :P (lol) ), stop and go traffic is only stop and go if you ride the bumper of the car in front of you. I have learned to leave bus lengths between cars when in traffic. i'm not ruining my clutch and driving up my stress levels because the car behind me wants to smell the car in front of me.

 

Amen. Not to mention the fuel economy benefits (less braking) and reducing traffic accidents for everyone by smoothing out the stop-and-go waves.