6MT throwout bearing and clutch system shenanigans

Is this "shift fork for 3rd is immediately suspect (it is crummy cast aluminum). That and the syncromesh keys and springs on the respective clutch hub have been a recurrent failure point (later revised). And naturally the 3rd syncro and its bearing (slop develops)." what i'm experiencing when I occasionally find that 3rd gear in the mornings?
I am an '06 with about 242k miles on my original clutch still... and the throw out bearing certainly squeaks, but still running. I did purchase the Clutch Masters hydro kit last summer and have it on the shelf waiting.... and now i'm nervous about that reading some stories with the hydraulics leaking....

 

Got mine back yesterday. Here’s the way it looks when cut on a true flywheel machine. .060” is the correct spec for the step. Make sure your machine shop understands that.

 

Things are happening today.



Flywheel is bolted up. Whenever I do this sort of thing I always use new OE flywheel bolts.

For these Tacomas, torque evenly to 22 ft lbs. Then turn another 90°. I just use a sharpie pen to mark things and then do the 90’s in two steps.





Spec 3+ clutch is ready to go.





New bolts for the clutch too. The previous clutch took a lot of torque on these bolts to get the pressure plate seated against the flywheel. So much so that I thought that I was going to break them. Definitely wanted to replace them for this go-around.





All bolted down and ready.





Make sure the pressure plate seats against the flywheel. You’ll feel it contact as you tighten the bolts. I’ve heard several stories of pressure plates coming loose. Likely from the installer not paying attention and just shooting for a torque spec.





This was my first attempt to rig up a way to measure finger height. Didn’t work out. The back end of the rulers were hitting the trans tunnel of the body.




Rummaging through my garage, I found some door frame shims left over from a house project. That’ll do. Paint mixing sticks would’ve been good too. But, I didn’t find any.





Here it is in action. Final results: 105mm from block/bell housing to clutch fingers. So, that means that we need to set the release bearing to be 108mm deep in the bell housing. The 3mm gap allows for clutch wear.

 

Difficult to see here. But, with the bearing height adjusted to where it needs to be, the anti- rotation tab on the Tilton unit ends up below the boss for the pivot ball.




Made the bracket to hold the anti-rotation pin. Used some aluminum scrap I had laying around. I’ll replace the pivot ball with a proper bolt before final assembly.





As viewed through the inspection hole in the bell housing. By looking at this pic, I can see that I still need to massage the threaded sleeve to fully sit against the base of the quill. This is one thing where the RC trans differs from the RA trans. It seated perfectly on the RA.




This is a better angle to see how the anti-rotation tab sits behind/lower than the pivot ball boss. No problem. We just put the pin in @BassAckwards

 

Chucked up and ready to knock that edge off.




Ahh. That’s more like it. Fully seated against the base of the quill.

 

I added some shrink tubing on the bolt that is acting as my anti-rotation pin. Just to tighten things up a bit and to help protect that hydro housing from getting too chewed up by those threads.

 

So, sealing up the 34mm hole where the OE slave cylinder was is something that still needs to be done. But, I have an idea.

 

Thanks for this part. The FSM has addressed the need for getting the finger height even for many years now, and a SST was even developed for adjusting individual fingers. I purchased the SST and right away broke off one of the fingers on a new OEM pressure plate by adjusting. So be very careful here!
OP did you sense any moment while doing his step that there could be a similar mishap and did you do anything special to avoid the problem?

 

Well, I’ve never heard of needing to adjust the fingers. I would hope that any decent pressure plate is going have all of its fingers just right. No adjustment necessary. If it does, it’s junk. Return it.

The reason that I am taking this measurement is to be able to correctly set the gap to the throwout bearing.

 

So, this is what I did with those half-moons:

 

Damn that is cool

 

Thanks. It came out pretty good. I’m happy with it.

I put it all together for the final time last night. Blue locktite where appropriate. Orange dust seal back into the HRB. Tilton says no lube on the piston. The Teflon coating it and the bearing housing have make it unnecessary.

At this point; The transmission is basically ready to install. Need some daylight and some time and I’ll get to it. Hopefully this Sunday.

 

I'll pay you for parts/parts list

 

I’ll be posting up what parts I used in the first few posts of this thread. I put some stuff up there already, but returned and exchanged a lot of it. So, I’ll need to edit that a bit. I’ll get to it.

Let me get this thing in and make sure it all works well before anyone goes and starts collecting parts.

 

Transmission is in!

I’d say that I nailed it on the bearing gap.

 

Amazing. How is it working out?

 

So far, so good. Stay tuned. This project is somewhat two pronged. New release setup as well as a new/different transmission.

Waiting on an AN fitting to arrive. Hopefully tomorrow. Once that’s all plumbed; That’ll be the moment of truth.

 

A little extra insurance against any thermal issues. I slid it all the way up to the topmost pressure line holding bracket on the back of the engine block. It’s all bunched up here until I get the hardline connected to the braided line. At that point I’ll slide it over the full length of the pressure line.

 

As I was typing the previous post. The delivery truck of happiness showed up.

 

One more thing done.

Here’s the connection with the previous post’s adapter in play.


Had to split the heat sheath. It was just a bit too small to slide over the adapter.


Temporarily bolted down the Russell bleed bracket that I found. Pretty cool. Should make bleeding a bit easier.


OE RC62F heat shield in place. I notched the bottom of it to make room for the bleed line.