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Hey all -

I'm about to head into the garage to tear into the heart of the Insight to replace its clutch and vital fluids. I've done countless clutches on Civics, and I'm going by the service manual. Have a BNIB Exedy OEM replacement clutch, sure looks purty. Photo documentation will be provided. :D

Planning on removing the clutch and flywheel this afternoon, then taking the flywheel to get resurfaced in the morning. Reassembly either tomorrow morning or afternoon.

Wish me luck. :)

My prayers are with the patient's speedy recovery. :)

I'm looking forward to those pictures.

Me too, I'm planning a clutch replacement this Summer and will be following this thread.

Alright, 4 hours of battle and I have emerged from the garage... covered in grime, but victorious!

I've got the old clutch and flywheel out at least. Tomorrow morning I'll take the flywheel out to get resurfaced and should be putting it all back together tonight. The one in there is definitely the factory one... it has the "HONDA" stamp on it.

The friction disc is mostly toast, clutch dust and residue all over the bell housing. Looks like it was on its last leg, everything was pretty well glazed also. No need to say, the new one looks 100% better.

Working around the IMA components wasn't a big deal. I made sure to shut the HV off in the rear and disconnected the 12v just in case of ... any mistake.

I got pictures of several tough spots. It's pretty easy when going by the book. There are a couple spots where it's important to do things in order. Some bolts you just can't get to unless you have followed the steps before.

One bolt I struggled with trying to find a decent way to get at it, for an hour. That was the biggest hangup.

The stock flywheel, sans commutation sensor, weighs in at 16 lbs. Combined with the IMA rotor, you've got an extra 25-30 lbs of rotating mass :(

I may try to get them to trim some weight off it where they can tomorrow when they resurface it. So long as they balance it afterwards.

Full report with pictures coming once done tomorrow.

How many miles on it?

Did you have total failure?

How many miles on it?

Did you have total failure?

It's at 133k. Not total failure, it was starting to chatter pretty bad when backing up on a slight grade. I knew it wasn't in great shape when I bought it, but has gotten a lot worse the last month or so, and I'm taking a 600+ mi trip next week, so I figured I'd fix it before I get myself stranded somewhere.

I had catastrophic clutch failure in my last Civic once... the friction plate pretty much blew up while I was downshifting. Managed to coast into my parent's driveway where I replaced it. :)

Alright, clutch is done. Give me a couple days to edit and caption photos to put together a full report.

It was mostly a straightforward procedure. Since my car had never been taken apart, and spent a lot of time in Ohio, a lot of bolts were very tight and many were partially corroded. I think those facts account for ~40% of the difficulty I experienced.

Another very hard thing is picking the transmission back up and putting the input shaft through the clutch, and getting the trans bolts started. This was mostly difficult for me because I was working solo and didn't have a transmission jack. The transmission weighs ~60 lbs and it must be lifted about a foot and swiveled around to get it to line up.

The test drive went well. The clutch feels ok, I think I was expecting more, but I forget it's not a sports car - not enough torque or short enough gears to really grab hard. The engagement point is not at least an inch or two lower, so that's very good.

I lost some clutch fluid out of the slave cylinder during disassembly. I bled it a little bit, but I think there may still be some air in the lines.

Full write up with list of required tools coming soon.