So does the hole thing have to come out of the car, then put back in, or can i work on it with it remaining in the bay?How would you recommend supporting it? I dont have any professional holders.
It is still a tough job to do without a hoist. The transmission needs to drop out the bottom on this car. You also need to place beams across the engine bay and chain the motor up to them as the transmission mounts also hold up one end of the motor. Also you need to remove the front wheels and lower control arms and pull both CV axles out.
You can rent a transmission jack to do the work, you can disconnect the transmission and pull it back far enough to remove the flywheel and put the new one in, be sure to mark the old one before you take it out so not to install the new one in backwards, and yes it can be installed the wrong way. Be sure to disconnect the battery and use safety stands and be careful. God Bless
Depending on what kind of car you have you may or may not have to support anything. Rear wheel drive you dont have to support anything. Front wheel drive you will have to support the engine. Find a pipe or a 4x4 and some chain and find two good spots to bolt the chain. Run the pipe or 4x4 from fire wall to front. And yes getting the tranny out of the way makes it alot easier. Use a floor jack to raise and lower the tranny and as always use jackstands to be safe
Well you could 'hoist' the engine out instead! They have to be seperated at least far enough to get in and take bolts out and remove flywheel-- Of course if you have an automatic transmission, it is a flex plate!.... All you need to do is support it with barerls, wooden boxes cement blocks and boards! Ingenuity works good here! If you can get up in air enough to work easily under it, --and safely support it so it can't fall on you! (Car falling you you can ruin your day!) I use lots of concrete blocks or large blocks of wood 8 or wider to prevent tipping over -- block wheels if on ground so that they can't roll! Then if you can get 4 of space between transmission and engine, - that is generally enough to get everything apart and replace, (you may get a few cuts doing this)!!**** This basically appies for rear wheel drive vehicles, -- as there is not enough room to move transmission sideways on front wheel drive cars! 99% of front wheel drive cars have engine in crossways! So in this case, you will need to remove the transmission, through barely enough wiggling room to even drop transmission!-- after out on ground,- you can then do work on flywheel! With front wheel drive, you also have to take part of suspension apart to remove drive axles too,-- in order to remove transmission !
How To Replace A Flywheel
