Saturday was a fine day to replace a clutch in my '63 544. With the help of a 122 man (who kept mentioning all the extra room he had in that series) we managed to get the tranny, bellhousing, clutch, flywheel and pilot bearing out. We sprayed degreaser on the tranny and bellhousing and took 'em to the local do it yourself car wash. Both looked great afterwards -- nice clean aluminum and volvo red paint. All the new parts went back in fine with the exception of the clutch pedal shaft. The rubber bushings basically fell apart.

After putting the shaft back together without the bushings and letting down the car the clutch pedal was pretty loosey goosey but went down and came back up. I could even see the fork arm move pretty good on the outside of the bellhousing. The trans seemed to shift fine with the car off. With the car started though I could not shift into any gear. I tried shifting into 1st with the car off and then started her up. The car lurched forward and I could not disengage the clutch.

Does this sound like something that new bushings in the pedal shaft and some adjustment of the thrust shaft will fix?

Thanks for reading,

Joe

Yea...clutch replacement in a B18 544 sucks. Might as well pull the whole engine with the transmission attached...

What was the reason for the clutch replacement in the first place? And... did you replace the whole thing... including pressure plate and throwout bearing? THere are two types of each, and a mix match could cause that....

But, knowing 544s, its probably the linkage. Just go over it all and make sure its tight, and adjusted right. It definitely tends to wear out.

OF course, the throwout arm could also be bent...which means its about to break. Had taht happen too on a 544 once. A throwout arm from a 122 will work, and its a stronger part.

Good luck with it! Hope you don't have to tear it apart again...

-Matt

Matt:

After 10 hours on my back under the car and my hands shaking from fatigue as I attempted to turn those nice little nuts on the driveshaft that defied my socket a negative thought or two often crossed my mind.

I rebuilt the clutch because last fall an intermittant squealing noise started to eminate from that area during warm up. The noise seemed to be most prominant in first and second gear but also occured sometimes with the car in nuetral. I suspected a bearing coming to the point of failure. The pilot bearing, clutch, pressure plate and throwout bearing were replaced with new and a resurfaced flywheel was installed.

I am holding a positive attitude that the linkage adjustment will make things right but if I need to take the clutch down a second time at least I know what's involved. Pedal action previously was pretty solid so I hope the fork is okay. If the assembly comes down again I will definitely check the fork. Was yours flexing in an obviously detectable manner?

Joe

You can't really see that fork in there... well, maybe you can. Don't remember. But in my case, the pedal would gradually get more and more play until I couldn't totally disengage the clutch. I'd have to adjust it every week or so.

Finally I got fed up with it, and re-worked all the linkage bushings (I thought that was where the problem lied), re-adjusted it perfectly... stepped once on the clutch and *snap*. And then there was nothing. It doesn't take much bending of that fork before it breaks.

But...if you havn't even tried to adjust things yet, I'm sure thats not teh problem. You quickly find the slop in the daylight and with a fresh set of eyes..

-Matt

Certainly replace the bushings and adjust, but I've driven 544s without bushings and the clutch should still work in its raggedy way.

If adjustment doesn't work: last month I had the same problem with a 544 clutch, three drop-and-reinstalls, test pilot bearing, rebuild linkage etc. and still no function. Finally replaced the shiny new Sachs pressure plate with the heavy old Fichtel&Sachs unit and clutch works fine. Cameron Lovre related a similar story recently as well...hopefully this is just an adjustment problem, but if all else appears normal, look to the pressure plate.

All best,
Nathan

Nathan:

I had read your posts about similar shifting difficulties with interest. The clutch worked fine previously with the bushings 85% destroyed so I didn't really suspect the pedal shaft to be the main problem.

The clutch pedal resistance was surprisingly low after reassembly. Maybe a large amount of adjustment of the thrust shaft normal following a change of so many parts (Pilot bearing/flywheel/clutch plate/pressure plate/throw out bearing). Unfortunately I had run out of daylight hours and was without artificial light by the time reassembly was complete so I didn't even begin to adjust the free play.

Thanks for the reply. I will try the linkage adjustment first and follow with reinstalling the old pressure plate if necessary.

Joe

The short answer is yes, it does sound like something you can fix with an adjustment. I had a similar problem after a clutch change a couple of years ago. The problem I had was that there wasn't enough adjustment on the thrust shaft to let me disengage the clutch. I ended up using a few washers as shims and that pretty much cured the problem. Maybe not the best way to do it, but it worked.....
--Ethan
--
'64 PVMoneypit, '93 945 Turbo

Ethan:

Hopefully a properly adjusted thrust linkage will do the trick. It was too dark to see what I was doing under there by the time reassembly was completed (10 hours start to finish). Unfortunately my flashlight died and I was by myself, 70 miles from home and looking like an escaped convict who just crawled out from a sewer.

My better half came and got me but it won't be until next weekend that I can take another crack at adjusting the linkage.

Thanks for the reply.

Joe