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Vince,

"Or do I measure the clearance without Belleville washer in, and sit shim in the top lip under the bearing retainer instead?"

Yes.

So . . . get rid of the cork ring. Put the input shaft and bearing in the bellhousing like you did in the photos. Lay a straightedge on the bellhousing, right next to the bearing's outer race, so it sits over the bearing's circlip. Get out with the feeler gauges and measure the gap between the straightedge and the bearing circlip. Or, you can make the same measurement with a digital caliper. Use the "heel end" of the caliper - extend the slide a couple of millimetres and you'll see it project beyond the end of the caliper. Put the sticky-out bit on the bearing circlip, then position the caliper so the "heel end" will bottom out on the bellhousing, and push down until it does. Read the clearance directly off the caliper's display.

We'll come to the shim-making problem in due course.

Rob

You're like a bloody oracle Rob.

I did think after typing my post the shim had to be in the top lip, so went and tried with the feeler gauge method a few times ealier and it seemed around .012.

I might try tomorrow too with the callipers, but I think it will be close to right. Which means a .010 shim would be perfect.

I know you are dubious about shim making, but as much as I love living on the far South Coast, you cant seem to be able to buy much or get good services down here I've found. Anyway, I got the packet of shim stock today from Repco, it has 4 thicknesses including .010, it might take me a couple of attempts but I feel I can do this with one shim.

I have a new clutch kit from Repco, I really think I will find tomorrow the splines on the one on the car are quite damaged, going by how hard it was to take gearbox off, or even push input shaft back through splines.

Big day ahead tommorow, and if I start losing it will leave some for Sunday. But I want car good to go for work Monday at the office. Was fortunate because of flooding I had to work from home all week, as car has been on stands with gearbox off since last weekend

Vince,

Put the straightedge across the clutch fork pivot ball stud and make sure it's not sitting proud of the bellhousing's machined face, because if it is . . . there's your shaft misalignment.

One possibility for shim-making is to cut a strip of shim stock in the width you need, and then bend it around the bearing outer race. You'll be bending it in the "hard" direction, so you'd have to sandwich one end of the shim between the bearing circlip and the transmission case (here's where that dinky little retaining screw will come in handy), and then use a screwdriver blade to push the shim stock under the circlip as you work your way around. The difficulty will be in not kinking or tearing the shim.

Rob

P.S. Did you grease the inner recess in the throwout bearing, and the slide, and the clutch fork's fingers?

Thanks Rob, that gives me a couple more things to consider in the morning, I hadn't thought of the stud sitting pround, I checked the gearbox cluster gear shaft wasn't sitting proud of gearbox and that was okay.

Now that's another idea for the shim, one way or another I think I've got this.

Progress reports to follow tomorrow.

Will certainly put grease in the right spots tomorrow.

Didn't progress a real lot this weekend, certainly not as much as I hoped, perhaps just overtired, just got the bellhousing changed over and new clutch kit on, worked all day Saturday but made a couple of bad calls which set me back, started again this morning as engine was supported on jacks, had trouble getting it back on rear mounts and after a lot of cussing and swearing I problem solved it and got it back on then quit for the weekend. Hardest part out of the way at least, next weekend will finess a bit and double check clutch alignment with input shaft, cut out shim, swap extension housing and put input shaft in box and put it back on, adjust clutch, put slave cylinder back together and bleed as I thought I had it well wrapped but knocked it working and suddenly was wet with clutch fluid and everything flew out. Then put everything back together and adjust gearshift linkages.

Not the best outcome, but could have been worse.

I put the clutch slave cylinder back together what I thought made sense, being that it all jumped out without getting a chance to see what came out.

But checked my workshop manual, and it shows a circlip (expander ring), can't find one anywhere in the work area under the car, should there definitely be one or don't they bother with these aftermarket slave cylinders supplied now?

my aftermarket one didn't have a circlip

Thanks for confirming, I really thought that from when I changed one years ago, someone else put this one on but I doubted there was one on it.

EJ HK are a different beast to FB EK


FB ute fixer upper, EK van on rotisserie

A couple of updates, as been a little while, will do in 2 posts, so last weekend I had already replaced bellhousing, and I put a new clutch kit in, interestingly the one the mechanic put in 4 years ago was the 220mm one and possibly that wasn't an issue I would say, but anyway my new one is the standard 200mm. Made up my home made shim painstakingly at 0.010 for the countershaft bore after a couple of attempts using tin snips, second time did a bit oversize and spent ages with a metal file and was happy with end product, used the little screw to hold it to bearing circlip.

Used the ej input shaft rather than the eh one that was in box, as the gear teeth are longer on eh third speed gear, although was a little concerned the bearing retainer I got a local mechanic to press on looked slightly cocked.

Put everything together, and took for test drive, seemed to be staying in gear then horrendous noise.

Left for this weekend.

So this weekend after taking off gearbox, figured out pretty quickly what went wrong, even on bench gearbox wouldn't change gears, noticed when tried to push into 3rd with cover off bearing came out of gearbox a bit. Then noticed bearing retainer had pushed further back along shaft allowing movement of bearing, should have trusted gut feel was bad job the guy who pressed retainer on, trouble is with EJ you need an industrial press to get this retainer on I would say, not something I can do at home.

So I put back together today witj EH input shaft, surprisingly drove much better and didn't have to hold gearstick to keep in 3rd like before, so changing bellhousing and taking my time with aligning certainly made a huge difference, but still gently falls out of 3rd after a while, you can't feel it pulling on gearstick in 3rd like before so that's good, it had got to the stage of jumping out within 500m without holding gearstick and now it will go quite a while.

So will monitor next couple of weeks, and see how it goes driving to work, and will think about what I will do from here.

Someone has offered me another EJ box, so I might get thst couriered here in a couple of weeks and use bits from that particularly the input shaft.

The EJ box is a challenging box that's for sure.

Vince,

One step forward, two steps back. When you drove the car, the input shaft bearing retainer settled into position. The wrong one, though.

You need to use the EJ input shaft. So find a shop that can press the retainer all the way on. Or - an anvil, a block of soft metal: copper, brass, aluminium, the input shaft, pointing upwards, a length of steel water pipe of the right diameter, and a b.f.h. This is the way the engine shop I use drives Holden crank timing gears onto crankshafts.

When you said "horrendous noise", I was fearing the dreaded chewing-up-of-the-top-gear-synchro-in-second-gear problem. Has the displaced input shaft bearing retaining ring chewed out the counterbore in the throwout bearing slide? Workshop manual's sectional view suggests that there's bugger-all clearance between the bearing retainer and the bottom of the throwout bearing slide's counterbore.

Rob

No damage done Rob, stopped driving it and left it in garage all week till I could pull appart again.

Every tiime I get a mechanic to do something it gets f***** up seriously.

Anyway a mate has a good press, will take it there and see if this one can be fixed, just concerned there will be burrs under it from being pressed on cocked.

Either that, or will see what box is like that I am getting couriered here 5/4. That will be an original EJ box.

I Googled "engine transmission misalignment" and came out here:

https://www.holley.com/blog/post/how_to ... utch_life/

One thing the blog post alerted me to is the rear face of the block not being at right angles to the crankshaft centreline. But yet the procedure doesn't look all that frightening. You put a magnetic base on the flywheel hub, close to the crankshaft centreline. I've got the equipment. I could measure up a bellhousing on a spare engine, if you want.

Rob