MarkMac77
Junior Member
So driving home from a trip to the mountains last week, I went to downshift and the transmission went *BANG* and the clutch pedal fell lifelessly to the floorboard.
A quick look under the truck revealed that the throwout bearing left the chat in dramatic fashion.
The parts counter guy asked me, “How do you know it’s the throwout bearing?”
The parts guy was convinced after I showed him the image above. So off I went with a replacement clutch kit, including a new pressure plate, friction disk, pilot bearing and throwout bearing.
Now, in my youth replacing a clutch was a 1-day job, but I was about to discover my 2001 Ram was a very stubborn truck.
It took a whole day just to get the old clutch out. The cross-member the transmission sits on was not willing to budge after being unbolted… even with the weight of the transmission and transfer case sitting on it. The cross-member laughed at the rubber mallet.
For lack of an OSHA approved technique, I had to use a farm jack to spread the frame rails and work the cross-member out Wile-E-Coyote style, with a lot of heavy iron hanging over my head, and under enormous tension.
**I’m not advocating this approach!**
I was already committed to the job at this point, desperate, and highly experienced at stupid.
I did manage to shoot the jack handle about 40 feet across the driveway once, where it bounced off a 1948 John Deere B and rolled halfway back to me.
I don’t know whether my individual truck had a previous adventure where the frame got bent, or whether Ram engineered the cross member to fit that tightly… but the crossmember was too wide by about two fat thumb-widths.
By the end of Day 2 I had everything put back together, no personal or property injuries, and the truck had a new clutch assembly, new hydraulic ***** & master cylinder, new transmission mount, and as a bonus I identified and fixed a broken vacuum line secretly hiding on top of the transmission.
Another *bonus* is that I thought I had a noisy transmission input shaft bearing, because the NV3500 transmission was noisy in neutral, just idling, without the clutch pedal depressed. In my experience, a dying throwout bearing usually makes noise when you depress the clutch pedal. Well, after replacing the throwout & pilot bearings the truck now idles without any transmission noise.
I did some searching online before and didn’t get much in the way of results for transmission noises. I also know Dodge didn’t make a huge amount of manual transmission trucks. I posted this here for future fellas researching clutch replacement and noises.
At any rate, the old hay wagon is back on the road now. 16 bales, no sweat..
A quick look under the truck revealed that the throwout bearing left the chat in dramatic fashion.
The parts counter guy asked me, “How do you know it’s the throwout bearing?”
The parts guy was convinced after I showed him the image above. So off I went with a replacement clutch kit, including a new pressure plate, friction disk, pilot bearing and throwout bearing.
Now, in my youth replacing a clutch was a 1-day job, but I was about to discover my 2001 Ram was a very stubborn truck.
It took a whole day just to get the old clutch out. The cross-member the transmission sits on was not willing to budge after being unbolted… even with the weight of the transmission and transfer case sitting on it. The cross-member laughed at the rubber mallet.
For lack of an OSHA approved technique, I had to use a farm jack to spread the frame rails and work the cross-member out Wile-E-Coyote style, with a lot of heavy iron hanging over my head, and under enormous tension.
**I’m not advocating this approach!**
I was already committed to the job at this point, desperate, and highly experienced at stupid.
I did manage to shoot the jack handle about 40 feet across the driveway once, where it bounced off a 1948 John Deere B and rolled halfway back to me.
I don’t know whether my individual truck had a previous adventure where the frame got bent, or whether Ram engineered the cross member to fit that tightly… but the crossmember was too wide by about two fat thumb-widths.
By the end of Day 2 I had everything put back together, no personal or property injuries, and the truck had a new clutch assembly, new hydraulic ***** & master cylinder, new transmission mount, and as a bonus I identified and fixed a broken vacuum line secretly hiding on top of the transmission.
Another *bonus* is that I thought I had a noisy transmission input shaft bearing, because the NV3500 transmission was noisy in neutral, just idling, without the clutch pedal depressed. In my experience, a dying throwout bearing usually makes noise when you depress the clutch pedal. Well, after replacing the throwout & pilot bearings the truck now idles without any transmission noise.
I did some searching online before and didn’t get much in the way of results for transmission noises. I also know Dodge didn’t make a huge amount of manual transmission trucks. I posted this here for future fellas researching clutch replacement and noises.
At any rate, the old hay wagon is back on the road now. 16 bales, no sweat..
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