SR20 tranny removal/chaning clutch walkthough?

So I’m looking for a write up of someone removing an sr20 tranny.

I have removed a KA tranny before so im assuming it can’t be to different.

I was mainly looking for some tricks from someone with experience.

I know to loose the engine mounts and jack the front up to get some access to the top of the bell housing.

I saw someone said they lowered the front subframe. Is this necessary? I did not need to do that with the KA.

I also know I have to disconnect my fmic to get some more lift. Is it a good idea to drop the exhaust as well?

If anyone can shoot me a link to a good walkthrough or just have any tips that would be great. I’ll be doing this saturday so I have some time to read

Thanks

disconect drive shaft from diff also ring around drive shaft then drop diff side of the drive shaft and pull it out then start removing the bolts around bell housing the top ones can be reached from bottom but sometimes going from engine bay can be easyer so try both find what you like best then remove tranny cross member make sure you have some sort of dolly or jack something on wheels so you can pull the trans out with out falling on you. you dont have to raise motor or remove intercooler or exhaust so dont do that

as for clutch remove clutch assem by removing the bolts around the pressure plate take off pressure plate be carefull cause the disk is loose when the pressure plat is loose it might fall so ether be carefull removing or install clutch alignment tool to hold disk from falling ether way remove pp then disk then flywheel if u are reusing the same flywheel get i resurfaced prob run you 40-50 bones you are going to need a 12 point socket im pretty sure they are 14mm a flywheel or crank holder can be your best friend but if you have a impact gun you can usually get them off easythen pull it off
next is removing and replacing the pilot bearing for this i highly recomend going to parts source and renting the tool there is people calming to use a socket alittle smaller and grease to force it out doesnt work. install is easy place clutch disk on flywheel put clutch tool in all the way and have the disk up snug so there is no gapsthen put pressure plate on and torque it as for the rest just do the reverse order

I find unbolting the downpipe from the rest of the exhaust system gives you a lot more play with tilting the motor to re install the tranny.

I’m glade you say you didn’t jack the motor but you also might have tiny hands. Thanks a lot for the write up that was very helpful. I did not know about the 12 point socket that would have been a piss off.

6foot 1 222lbs dont have huge hands but are far from small

i jacked the front of the motor. I needed to so that i can slide the tranny out as there was not enough room and i would hit the trans tunnel. Its a little more angle that helped me a lot. Just used a bottle jack.
When ur removing it i had to rotate the trans as well to get it in and out.

yea i just did this, i jacked up the front of the enigne and also dropped the exhaust, it gives you more space to twist the tranny so it will come out easy. The pilot bearing can be easily removed with a hammer, chisel, and screwdriver without damaging anything, ive done it several times.

Yeah I think I need to resort to jacking up on the motor. Right now I have the tranny about an inch away from the motor but i’ve been killing myself trying to pry/jiggle it out. I’ll try jacking the motor up to get some more room tomorrow after work. I was able to get all the bolts with out jacking though. The top one on drive side was a huge pain in the ass. Other than than that it was awkward but do able.

I seriously think this is the biggest pain in the ass job to do so far. In the last year i’ve pretty much rebuilt my whole car new interior new rear subrame 5 lug brakes power steering alternators new turbo manifold and to think that a clutch which is something that is designed to wear out and needs changing is this big of a pain. How has no one designed an easier way to do this lol.

My buddy works at porsche and to change the clutch on a GT3 they need to put this special brace on the subframe because the motor/tranny is a load bearing member its a 13,000 job. How has no one thought of something quick and easy yet! either way thanks for the tips its almost out.

I can have the tranny in my SR out in 39 minutes by myself. I timed it. Easy as fuck.

Well it took me close to 12 hours lol I could do it a lot faster next time I wasted a lot of time doing things in the wrong order and learning how to reach bolts. Like for instants I didn’t know that you could loosen off the motor mounts from below I thought I had to try and loosen the top bolt so Iwasted 30 mins just figuring that out. Probably wasted an hour trying to get the tranny out before I jacked up the motor and figured out how to twist it. Surprisingly I got the tranny back in pretty fast. I thought that it was going to be lot more awkward but once I found the right place to put the jack to get the right angle it went pretty smooth.

I do have question though how long does it take to break in a new clutch. Stage 2 I read 500 miles but that seems like a lot. I did notice when I went for a cruise it slipped around 3500 in 4th when i stepped on it. Other than the one time it slipped I had no problems.