Hi All,

I just changed my clutch to ACT everything was going well until I needed to seat/engauge the monoloc collar to the throw out bearing. The clutch fork is positioned toward the passenger side of the car and I can't seem to get the collar to fully seat into the throw out bearing. When looking through the maintenance hole in the transmission its maybe a 16th of an inch from fully locking onto the bearing. Is there a trick to this? The fork moves back and forth the collar is installed correctly in the pressure plate. I was careful to ensure that it didn't pop off or partially pop off. The bearing clutch fork springs and bushings are all new. I have tried to use brute force and it partially grabs but wont fully seat into the bearing.

Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated as I don't want to damage anything.

 

i struggled with that too, maybe 75% of of the time. what i have done that worked was to loop a long & strong ziptie on the fork and have my wife pull on it while i wedge the collar with a screw driver

 

So, what you're saying is, it's just brute force to get it to seat? I've been helping Puffin with the work, and both of us are having a really difficult time with it. Nothing looks off-center or anything. I think there's also a fear of breaking something if we pull too hard on the fork. We've already had to pull the transmission a second time because the collar went in crooked and a tooth bent (we replaced the monoloc collar).

Everything else has mated up nice... it's just this Monoloc collar that's stopping us from going further. :/

 

so to remove monoloc you have to pull the lever then unseat the monoloc with a screwdriver. to install its the same : pull lever and unseat the monoloc. its just harder

 

Fair enough. I know it shouldn't be rocket science, but this is also my first go at replacing a pull type clutch so I've never had to go that route before. Doing things twice always sucks so it was worth seeing what other people's experiences were like. I've seen some videos where the person engaging the lever does it with 2 fingers with hardly any force and it clicks into place. In other videos, they simply omit the procedure altogether.

If it stops raining outside, I'm guessing we'll give it another go tonight, but in the mean time if anybody has any other suggestions on how to gain a bit of leverage on that thing, it would be greatly appreciated. I'm guessing we'll try the "1 person pulling the lever on top, 1 person pushing the lever through the hole on the bottom" method and see how it goes.

 

yup agreed. i put a handle on the big ziptie my wife was pulling on so she wont get hurt lol

 

Ok. Update to the situation. We had to disassemble the transmission (again) to check what was going on in there, and noticed that one of the ears that holds the fork on the TOB was bent. So, not sure if we got a defective TOB or what, but that was definitely the issue in seating the collar. We got a new collar ordered (just in case) and a new TOB, which arrived a few days ago. We installed both, and as soon as the bellhousing bolts were mounted up we tried seating the collar, and it literally just popped into place without too much force on the fork. We tried pulling it back to it's previously unlocked position, and couldn't, so it appears (to us) that the collar was seated correctly. On a related note, as a part of this entire process, we also replaced the clutch slave cylinder (oem mitsubishi branded), but not the master (it's worth noting in case it's related).

So, we spent the 4th working on it and got the car completely assembled, with exception of the front bumper, and we're ready to bleed the clutch. My buddy hops in the car, hits the pedal, and it falls to the floor... At this point, we're not panicking, as we knew we'd have to bleed the clutch. So, we hook the vacuum pump (similar to a mity-vac or whatever) to the slave bleeder valve, making sure the master cylinder is full, and then start pumping on it, and then cracking the slave to let it bleed. Long story short, VERY little fluid is getting pulled through the hose, and although a ton of air bubbles are coming out, almost no fluid is being pulled through. When I look at the master cylinder, the fluid level hasn't even budged.

So, we tried it manually.... Just hooked a hose to the bleeder, had my buddy pump the clutch a few times, and let it bleed. Again, same result, and ZERO pressure appears to be building up under the pedal. I've bled a few clutches in my past, and one thing they've had in common is that they've all started to build at least some pedal pressure after a few attempts. This clutch pedal has zero pressure. Everything went together smoothly this last time, so I'm truly confused as to what's happening.

There's only 2 things that I can think of that might be causing this....

1 - Perhaps we got a bad slave cylinder. I'm not sure how to test it, but maybe it came DOA.
2 - The monoloc collar wasn't really seated (?)

I'm hoping to god it's not # 2, as neither of us have it in us to attempt this again. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

You've already solved it but I always just seat the TOB in the monoloc by giving the fork a moderate smack with a hammer, don't need to wail on it.

As for your hydraulic issue, are you sure you're getting fluid in the clutch circuit? There is a separate chamber in the reservoir for the clutch fluid and you basically need to overfill the reservoir to get it to spill into the clutch chamber.

 

Yeah you need to overfill the reservoir, and keep it overfilled as you pull the fluid. only small taps on the pedal if you want to push fluid. you might need to squeeze on soft hoses to make sure the bubbles exit up to the reservoir

 

That was it! OMG, thank you both so much! The car's moved out of my driveway for the first time since June 10th. Amazing feeling having that done and over.

 

Awesome. Glad it was something simple!