DIY: Aftermarket flywheel

[GooOnYou]

Anyone have the steps to installing an aftermarket flywheel? How complicated is doing this yourself?

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[Broke_Apex_Seal]

I had one but these donkeys deleted it.

[SharkDiver]

I need this also soon.....

[Bart!]

You'll need to take out your transmission.

[Im_DANomite]

you'll need to take out more than that.

[carbonRX8]

We should have a DIY on this. I will work on writing this and try to note details both coming off and going back on. Please pardon the progress and help me out by noting mistakes. this is all from memory, so I am sure there will be some. I will add your help with reference, if you would like.


First, you are going to need all the standard tools (sockets, deep sockets, extensions, swivels...) A detailed description of most of this DIY is also in the service manual.
You are also going to need a 54mm socket and breaker bar, a transmission jack (you can convert a standard aligator jack with a 2x4 and some big cable ties. I will detail this later.)

Jack up the car on all four corners with jackstands. For those that do this all the time, it is not that big a deal, but this is serious bidnez. You will have a ton and a half of unforgiving metal over your very fragile head. SO IF YOU DONT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING AT THIS POINT I RECOMMEND YOU BACK OFF. That said the best way to jack the car is to chock the back wheels (and ebrake and in gear) then find a little knub of metal just behind the big plastic deflector in the front of the car. It is raised with a hole in the middle and is on a major crossmember. Place the head of your jack on there and start jacking. It helps to drive up on 2x4s to facilitate this. Once it is to the desired height, set the jackstands just about 3 inches back from the back edge of the front wheel well. Jacking the back is a little easier. Set the jack head on the dif. and raise it up. Set the rear stands. I had to eventually jack the car more than 3' in the front, but others have not had to. That is at the point where you are actually taking off the flywheel so we will wait for that.

Prop the hood and take off the battery neg. terminal. (I wrapped it in a latex glove and let it hang.) Take the engine cover off just to let in some light.

Under the Car:

Take off the tunnel crossmembers (12mm bolts; you will note that you only have to remove the bolts on the right hand side and just loosen the LHS as the LHS bolt holes are slotted. Thanks Mazda!) and loosen the support member from the manifold to the tranny. Take off the bolts from this support on the tranny side and swing the support out of the way. You dont have to take it off.

Remove the starter. 14 mm bolts hold it on. One is really long and has a nut hidden towards the engine. I recommend taking the whole starter off and not just let it hang. You can let it hang if you are doing this on a lift, but it will just get in the way on jacks. To remove the wire, there are two 10mm bolts if I recall, one of them is under a little plastic thingy. Remove these and chuck the starter aside.

You can also take off the slave clutch cylinder. This is way up on the transmission on the LHS and the tip of it goes through a hole in the top of the throwout fork that exits the top of the bell housing. It is held on with two 12 or 14 mm bolts. There is also a 12mm bolt that holds a hose hanger attached to the clutch cylinder. These are all tight fits. It helps to have the new low profile craftsman ratchets here. Let the clutch cylinder hang.

While you are up there, start disconnecting the wire hangers that are plastic barb fittings shoved in holes in the very top of the bell housing. These hold a wire that runs down the spine of the tranny. If you dont disconnect these you CANT drop the tranny. I tried. It dont work! There are three I think and you have to break them. I could see no other way. You can hook them back with cable ties. The wire terminates in a loom just under forward the shifter. There are two black connectors and two white connectors for some tranny specific sensors (neutral and reverse I think). I dont think you have to mark them but I did with colored cable ties. then disconnect them. It is hard to do. You have to squeeze them as I recall.

Unhook the oxy sensor connector so that the wire hangs free (located on the right side of the tranny.) Also disconnect the wire hanger at this possition (10mm bolt) Unbolt the cat from the manifold (use PB Blaster for the front, I broke a bolt here and had to make repairs) and at the cat back. You might have to actually take off the posts at the rear of the cat. Use a 13mm deep socket. Undo the rubber hanger. Get some Kastar Exhaust Hanger Removal Pliers from handsontools. It will make your life easy. Drop the cat (well dont drop it) and scoot it out of the way. Next take off that plastic heat sheild with the foil on it (four 12mm bolts).

BACK IN THE CAR:

Get in the car and remove the shift knob. Open the center console, and carefully pry open the little hole cover. from there you can lift off the cover. I have heard that this is a very easy place to FUBAR. Plastic tabs break and all. I did not have this problem, but I generally move carefully after understanding the situation by careful study. Once the console cover is up, you will notice wires, esp. if you have the nav system. I recommend that you carefully unlatch the wire looms. I also recommend that you open the ashtray and pull it out. I dont remember exactly but if you remove the ash tray you will save serious time on the next step (there are screws involved here, I just dont remember where)

Now you have to get those white plastic wire holders off the bolt studs. I think there are two or three. I used a tiny screwdriver to hold the little internal latch back and pried them off. A razor also works here, but is permanent. Unbolt the 10mm bolts and remove the shift insulator. Carefully pull off the second insulator (all black rubber as I recall). Unbolt the shift lever cover (three bolts) and take out the shifter. I recommend replaceing the stock shifter with the Richard Paul short shifter here.

Back under the car:

To fashion a transmission jack, take a 2x4 and cut about a half meter piece. On each end, as close to the edge that you can, drill two holes with a 3/8 bit. Make them at a slant so that the holes are wider on one side. Drill a 3/8 hole in the middle about 1/3 of the way from the end. Total of 5 holes. Pull the cotter pin on one of your jacks (you should have two or more; what were you thinking?) that holds the cup at the head. Set the cup aside. Run a carrage bolt through the middle hole of your 2x4 and bolt it to the hole on the head of your jack. Use washers. Now slide two cable ties through the four holes at the end of the 2x4. These are not your standard cable ties. These are the big ass meter long cable ties. You can get them at Home Depot. Have this ready and at hand.

Now, The powerplant frame (PPF). It is really heavy and is held up by 9-19mm bolts at more than 100 ft lbs. Be prepared to use some muscle. Use a 1/2 inch drive breaker with a deep 19 mm socket. Oh, get a 1x4 piece of wood and shove it behind the dif. This will prevent the dif (which is heavy and attached to the drive shaft) from swivleing forward. Place your transmission jack under the transmission, to take up some weight, but dont tighten the straps yet. Loosen all four bolts from the front side and remove three. Leave the PPF hanging on the last. Remove all the bolts on the back. . Make sure your face is not directly under the PPF; it is shit heavy and will crush your head like a watermelon if you are not ready for it. Have a jack underneath it to help. You will have to really wiggle it to get it to release. I mean wiggle with all your strength while holding that piece of wood behind the dif. It will come free. Once it is free in the back, take off the last bolt in the front and drop it. Move it out of the way. (you can replace it with a lighter one from SRmotorsports and Richard Paul was making a Ti one.)

Next is the drive shaft. Four bolts hold it to the dif (14mm) You will have to put one or two into position by rotating the back wheel then lock the e-brake. Crank off a bolt or two then get out from under the car, unlock the ebrake, rotate the tire about 1/3 of a turn, lock the ebrake then get back under and crank off more bolts. Be careful with the drive shaft. If you have the sport package the shaft is wound carbon fiber. If you scratch it, you might want to consider a new one. Pull the drive shaft out of the rear of the tranny. Depending on how the car is tilted you may get a bit of viscous transmission oil out of the rear seal. This is normal as the drive shaft engagement gear holds the fluid in. Watch how much you loose. More than a two handfulls and you will want to top off (BTW kitty litter works great to absorb all oils) There is a SST (special service too) to plug the rear seal. I dont know where you get one. You may also be able to fashion a plug yourself. Dont loose your sock in there or you will be all over the forums like that bimmer owner that stuffed his sock in the oil filler hole. Search for that, It is a good read.

I think we can drop the tranny now.

There are 5-14 mm bolts holding your bell housing to the engine. Three are easy to get. Two are hard. You can find the easy ones, but dont undo them until you do the top ones. The two at the top that are hard are right up at the apex of the bell housing. i used two extentions and two swivels to get to them. You may find an easier way. Let me know. Take the top bolts all the way out, then strap your transmission jack tight and loosen the rest of the bolts. If everything is off, you should be able to slide the transmission back and down. Be careful because your shift lever hole will bump up against the frame hole and drop crumbs into your tranny. Watch for fluid leak.

[army_rx8]

i have the instructions for the mazdaspeed flywheel at work somewhere if you want me to scan them in?

[rkostolni]

I am planning to do a clutch soon, so I would definitely use this as well.

[carbonRX8]

It ain't finished yet but does anyone want to offer edits. Post or PM me.

[Joe RX-8]

I am thinking about tackling this job myself, too. Looks like about $100 in special tools (54-mm socket, flywheel lock, etc.) plus a tranny jack

carbonRX8: you mentioned that you needed to jack the front end up about 3'. Is this pretty typical? Anyone else have a comment on this? I don't have a lift, so this is an important number (need to check how tall my tallest jackstands are...)

Perhaps a naive question, but do you need to actually pull the transmission completely from the car (e.g., unbolt from the rear diff), or can you leave the back end hooked up and just swing the front down? Or is there not enough motion in the rear joint/can't get the front out of the way? Or once you have gotten it this far, you might as well go the rest of the way?

TIA

[carbonRX8]

To answer your last question first, you do have to pull the tranny. I had a 280z that you could change the clutch without removing the transmission (just dropping it while still linked to the diff), but on this car the ppf prevents you from doing what you are suggesting.

you only have to jack up the car a bunch if you are using a breaker bar to remove the 54mm flywheel nut. If you use a high torque impact wrench, you will not have to boost the car so high.

Good luck and thanks for reminding me to finish this write up.

Oh and you dont have to spend so much on tools. You could go to harbor freight and pick everything you need for half what you said.

[Joe RX-8]

What do you qualify as "high torque"? I have a 1/2" IR that's suppose to be good to around 750 lb-ft, but I'm not sure I'm going to find a 54-mm 1/2" drive impact socket, or how I would put it back on close to the correct torque (other than the "my 200# hanging off a 2-ft bar = 400 lb-ft" method).

Thanks for your notes. I have a couple weeks until I will have a large enough window of opportunity to do this, so I have time to think about it still...

[carbonRX8]

Use a 3 quarter drive wrench. 1/2 wont do. 540 ft lbs break-free should be the minimum. When you put it back on, I would recommend you do it by hand. Get a 3 foot breaker bar and put what you estimate to be >100 lbs of force on the end of it. That will equate to 300 ft lbs at the nut. If you are not an everyday mech, budget 2 days to do this. (16 hours)

(Sorry I didnt read your whole post until now. I think you have all the right ideas. Good luck)

[Joe RX-8]

Stopped by my local Harbor Freight (I've only known them as a catalog retailer, and honestly never knew they had stores), but no 54-mm socket. Largest in metric was about 30-mm. 54-mm is one big socket!

[Go48]

Originally Posted by Joe RX-8

Stopped by my local Harbor Freight (I've only known them as a catalog retailer, and honestly never knew they had stores), but no 54-mm socket. Largest in metric was about 30-mm. 54-mm is one big socket!

Check out MazdaTrix.com. I think they have the socket and large breaker bar.