Input shaft issue?

So I bought my tacoma with a clutch that seemed like it was on the end of it's life (no noises, just hard to shift) and after much deliberation I decided to replace the clutch with a marlin crawler kit.

I had a shop install the kit and after ~1000miles the clutch started chirping (well it might have started earlier than that and just got louder as miles passed) and it went away when the pedal was depressed. We figured it was a faulty throw out bearing and after a lot a couple weeks I got a new marlin crawler kit put in it and the mechanic informed me that the old bearing appeared fine, but the chirping was gone with the new kit.

Well now I've driven it for about 150miles and I'm starting to hear some very quite chirping again that goes away when I depress the pedal.

After the first install the mechanic told me there was no pilot bearing on the input shaft at all. Now that I'm having this issue with chirping again I think that maybe the lack of a pilot bearing caused grooving in the input shaft which is causing the pilot bearing not to seat correctly and chirp as they spin (when the clutch pedal is released?).

So my questions are:

Does this sound diagnostically correct?

And is the input shaft replaceable?

How hard is the input shaft to get to?

Where can I find instructions for transmission/bell housing removal?

And anything else you might think I should know

 

If the pilot bearing was missing with the original clutch installation , I would suspect the input to output bearing to have some additional wear .
The purpose of the pilot bearing is to support the clutch disc when you push the clutch pedal down .
What transmission do you have in the truck ?

 

It's a 3.4l 4x4, I think that's the r150 or r151?

 

Does the pilot bearing rest on the input shaft?

The reason I think this is not just a bearing issue is because something in there is causing new bearings to keep going bad.

I believe the lack of a pilot bearing on the original disk may have caused the input shaft to groove where the pilot bearing goes. And since it groves new bearings won't quite seat right and start warbling around soon after install. I also think that the fact that it quits making noise when I press the clutch seems like a pilot bearing issue as the fork probably steadies out the bearing when I put pressure on it.

The chirping also gets very apparent when I remove the boot that goes around the hole the clutch fork enters the bell housing at.

 

Bump

Anyone?

If anyone has a good link to bell housing pulling instructions that would be great, and instructions on input shaft removal would be Even better!

 

*accidental post