Replacing my clutch.

Unfortunately, I stripped one of the bolts from the clutch to the flywheel. I was being extremely careful, using torque wrench and torquing to spec. Oh well. It is not badly stripped since I stopped immediately.

Obviously, the most conservative fix is to replace the flywheel.

However, I'm wondering if I could go without one bolt out of the three bolt set - middle if it matters. And if so, I'm guessing I should completely remove the bolt to prevent it from coming loose.

The only other thing I can think to do is to threadlock it down. FSM doesn't call for treadlock on those bolts.

Any experienced suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Thanks.

 

you can go without 1 bolt. as long as the other 8/9 bolts are holding it in.
I had that issue for 3-4 years without any problems, until the clutch wore out..

make sure you align the clutch exactly in the center, and use a torque wrench when you tighten those clutch bolts



^^^can you find the missing bolt?


the proper way to remove the stripped/broken bolt would be to drill it out a little bit and use a reverse thread bolt extractor to try to get the rest of the bolt out the threads.

Otherwise it's drill it out completely and retap the threads.

they're M8x1.25 thread pitch, I believe

 

You were only torquing to 25-33 ft-lb right?

 

Thanks. As it turns out, it was just the bolt.

Very strange. the top threads of the bolt stripped. I got a new bolt and it torqued fine.

I don't recall the exact torque but it was whatever the fsm said.

Of course..... After everything was back together, my transmission failed. I knew it was on the way out but wtf? 200k miles so not really surprising.