Im about to change out my clutch and am wondering for people who have done this already on a GD3 07 or 08 do you have any pointers? how difficult is it? any tips and tricks?
HELP ME!
I'm terrified.....

 

I wish I could guide you on this one. When I researched this one myself it said like 6 hours plus for labor. WTF. I've worked on a lot of Honda's in my day and that was like an hour and half job for me with hand tools. I was lucky my buddy (that has a shop) owned me a favor and did it for a deal.

Honestly though i'm super busy with work most the time but I would have liked to see what this job entailed. This is one of the only repair/mod I didn't do.

Good luck!

 

Thanks man. I'm gonna try to do a diy I have a couple buddies helping me. I've heard its not Terribly hard on the fit but that there is a lot of stuff in the way. From what ican see the tranny is pretty small and I feel like it shouldn't be that crazy of a job but we will see lol

 

Well, you'd have to be able to move the transmission far enough away from the engine to be able to get in and remove the clutch. Also, ideally, you'd inspect the flywheel to makes sure it's still serviceable with your new clutch plate. A replacement fly wheel isn't crazy expensive unless you get a special racing flywheel.

I think you have to remove the axles which is a relatively big job. I wouldn't wanna screw up my cv joints by prying the tranny away from the engine with the axles in the differential. I guess you'd at least have to remove the transmission mount to be able to move the transmission far enough away from the engine to get in there and replace the clutch. Ideally, I'd get the transmission completely out of there but for that, you'll have to remove the subframe. Also, you have to support the engine so you would need an extra jack or an engine hangar.

It's a big job! I used an exedy clutch but didn't install it myself. I did work on the transmission though. If your remove the transmission far enough, you can also replace the throwout bearing and bearing seal which are included in the kit which also contains some grease. I find the OEM Exedy clutch a little soft but then again I'm still on my first 400-500 miles, it should firm up a little. You would hope to at least get 50k miles or more from a clutch job so might as well be thorough and change all that stuff in there.

 

If you like a spirited drive, I'd look for a clutch that's a little more grippy than the Exedy OEM. It's good, but not excellent!

 

hey man so my transmission is out.. i installed the new throwout bearing and pilot bearing and rear seal. the flywheel is getting machined tomorrow and then hopefully back in and good to go.

 

Cool. I think the standard exedy flywheel is 80$ so that's why I would consider replacing it if it's not serviceable. If you got a good price on machining, then go for it! It's kinda like rotors. They are so cheap that sometimes it's just not worth the price of getting them machined if you are just gonna DIY.

 

got it machined it was 40 bucks and took an hour i would rather do that then order it and spend 100

 

To each his own! I recently cracked open my tranny and replaced the notorious mainshaft bearing but thought the other bearing on top of the mainshaft was kinda so so. Didn't change it and now that it's all back together I regret it a little! It's not every weekend you wanna be removing a transmission. Then again you live in Cali so you don't have a shitty 5 month winter like me where it's impossible to work on a car unless you have a heated garage!

 

if it rained here regularly we would have been screwed for sure lol. Which is the main shaft bearing? Not the pilot bearing right?

 

No, the mainshaft bearing is inside the actual transmission not in the clutch case. Here is a view of the bottom half of the GD3 transmission case. You can see the mainshaft (aka input shaft) bearing as well as the bum bearing I replaced right besides it. The mainshaft fits right in there. The other end of the mainshaft actually sticks out slightly of the transmission case and it's what you have to plug into the clutch plate when you install the transmission.

Do a google search for Honda mainshaft bearing and you'll see that it's a bearing that is known to fail in Hondas. It sucks because it's basically always spinning, except when you press the clutch pedal. Cost me about 30$ In OEM parts to replace but I had to rent a bearing puller for 10$ to extract the old bearing.

 

was that preventative maintenance or did it start to leek?

 

I actually had a bad rattle as demonstrated in this video. It was clearly audible inside the cabin. Some people drive on the bad bearing for 1 or 2 years and deal with the noise. The only problem is that if the bearing were to fail and break, it will send broken pieces all in your transmission and could probably wreck it.

Since my mechanic was pulling the tranny anyway, he did a clutch job. I bought the exedy OEM kit which looked really nice, but I find it a bit soft. I hope it'll stiffen up once I get past 1k kilometers on it (600 miles). The stage 1 is about 350+ $ compares to the exedy OEM that cost me about 150$. I heard that the unboosted/turboed Fit engine was too weak to justify a racing clutch so I just went for a stock like replacement. However, I find my car slightly lost some zip.

 

i bought the oem exedy clutch kit as well. i wanted the stage one but it really doesn't make any sense in my car. Just a PWJDM carbon intake and a Skunk2 catback. not enough performance mods to justify such an expensive clutch. i would be shocked if I'm making 105 hp at the wheels.