The Story:

Since the Bronco was killed on the move from Texas to Washington, all I had left was the Thunderbird and the unfinished Jeep. There's no way I was going to haul Jeep parts in the Thunderbird. Also, I had a temporary job coming up to remodel a house. So, after a lot of thinking, and lots and lots of looking, I settled on an F-250 4x4 that I had found for a good price. It's real plain; vinyl bench seat, vinyl floor, regular cab, painted white, no A/C; just your good, basic work-type truck; a great foil to the Thunderbird.

Also, I can clean the dog hair out of it with the leaf blower.

In July of 2003, the clutch decided that it had enough. Now, I've changed clutches before, and I've got to admit that weight of the transmission/transfercase aside, this was by far the easiest clutch job I've ever done. First, I didn't have to jack up the truck to work on it. (A real advantage to having a tall vehicle.) The shift lever bolts to a stub on the top of the transmission. This was also nice, as most truck transmissions require removing the top cover to remove the shift lever. Also, by removing the floor plate in the truck, I had very easy access to those annoying top two bellhousing bolts, and better than normal access to the next ones down on either side.

Now, I know that all the books and most everyone I've talked to all say that you have to remove the transfer case first. Well, I didn't. I wasn't too hot on the idea of separating the gear boxes, as not only is that more stuff to put back together, it requires sealing up the gasket between them, and opens up the possibility of losing the fluid out of the transfer case.

To get the crossmember out, I had to remove the rubber transmission mount from the transmission. This leaves a large flat area on the bottom of the transmission; the perfect place to set the top of a roller jack. By jacking right at the left-hand side of this area, I had almost perfect balance of the transmission-transfer case combination; it was just a little front heavy, and balanced really well side-to-side.

Here's a safety trick: With the big cover out of the cab, put a short length of wood or steel tubing or something else strong across the hole, and loop a length of chain over it and around the transmission. It doesn't have to be tight, just tight enough so that if anything slips, the chain will take the weight of the transmission and not kill you.

Also, some of you may be familiar with the extra-long bolt trick. For those who aren't, it's pretty simple. Any bellhousing that I've ever worked with, regardless of brand, has two bolts that are obviously the "sides". I use a couple of bolts that are about 4" too long, slide them thru those holes, and crank 'em into the back of the engine. This leaves the bellhousing a few inches out from the engine, but at this point, I have two rails that help keep things aligned while I turn the transmission output shaft (or, in the case of my truck, the front output on the transfer case), to get the input shaft aligned with the clutch splines. Once everything is lined up, I put in the other bellhousing bolts (just flush, not cranked tight yet), and then replace the two super-long bolts with the correct ones before I torque them all down.

I'll expand this page and get pictures up as soon as I get a chance to take some.

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