What I spent my entire weekend doing (Long)

[kaiserwilhelmi]

Several weeks ago, among other things, I upgraded to a Vast clutch, RS4 pressure plate and an AWE light weight flywheel. Despite knowing full well about the SAC ring and how it can shift in shipping, I installed the pressure plate with the SAC ring slightly out of adjustment. I simply didn't have a reference photo of exactly where the adjuster ring should be when new, and it looked like it was in the right place when I installed it. When I finished the whole project though, I had that telltale sign whereby the clutch pedal reached it's travel limit before ever reaching the floorboard. Damn, I was screwed.

There were three "worst things" about this whole saga, the first of which was that I actually took a picture of my own f-up, catching myself in the act during the original install.



You can see the springs on the PP are not completely seated, or rotated counter clockwise compressing the springs. Here's the first pic after spending all day removing my transmission and finally the PP.



With the PP out, now I had to figure out how to compress the actual springs or "fingers" to release the pressure on the SAC ring enough to adjust it. Since I don't have a hydraulic press lying around, I had to improvise. As they say, a picture is worth...



Don't laugh. This worked better than I expected. The second "worst thing" was the fact that, after spending a whole day removing my gearbox, this part of the procedure literally took me 5 minutes. After this, it was a simply matter of reinstalling everything, which took another entire day.

Here is what the PP SAC ring adjustment should look like when it's adjusted correctly.



A little bit in shadow, but you can see on the right spring that things are where they should be now. Also note in the slots that resemble hours on a clock, you can visibly see the fat ends of the adjustment "ramps" on the SAC ring now. This should have been the dead giveaway that something was wrong when I installed it. A day and a few rounded allen bolts later, I am back on the road now.

So the third "worst thing" you ask? On the drivers side of the gearbox near the bellhousing area, exactly over the side of the PP, there is an access hole about an inch in diameter.



Through this hole, I could actually see one of the grey plastic tabs on the SAC ring staring at me defiantly. I had hoped that after removing the coolant reservoir, I could get my wife to depress the clutch pedal a little, freeing up enough pressure on the SAC ring and I could pry on the tab to turn it back to it's as new state. I made sure to practice this on my stock PP, clutch and flywheel assembly using my homemade press you saw above, and it simply would not work. With the clutch and flywheel still in place, you can not free up enough pressure to adjust the SAC ring. I snapped the plastic tab I was prying on in my old stock PP and the ring never budged. It can only be adjusted on a freestanding PP, much to my shigrin. Had that worked, this would have been a 10 minute job at best. Agonizing. Thank you for your time.

[ModifiedA4]

[reefer_bob]

And you're also a master at pulling the tranny now.

Maybe VAST should figure out a way to install a shipping block in the PP so this doesn't happen in the future...

Good Job on the House-Press.

When I first saw the picture, I though you were gonna say you were working on your car when the house started to colapse...

[Pat-SoCal]

[erik9108]

[kaiserwilhelmi]

[Snow Trooper]

good job on getting it fixed

[lemieux@curbside]

i like to see people able to improvise and get it done )