The usual wisdom goes that taking something apart is a whole lot easier than putting it back together again. For most people, this is probably true—doubly so if you're in the business of taking things apart with blunt tools or firearms or bulldozers or so forth.
In contrast, I've found that taking cars apart is often far more complicated than putting them back together again. All the grime and heat cycling means that bolts and nuts get fused together in inconvenient ways, and the space constraints of modern automobiles mean that half the time you can't even get to the parts because it isn't clear how the heck to get to them in the first place.
This has been the case with this clutch replacement. It's been five weeks since this car became undrivable, and I'm just now at the point that I've removed everything required to fix the many small problems.
The last few parts to remove were the crankshaft rear main seal (big circle in the image above) and the transmission input shaft seal (small circle). Both of these are rubber diaphragms mounted to stiff metal rings which are crammed embarrassingly into the nether orifices of the BMW. As such, removing them was a giant pain in the ass—what looks like a thirty-second exercise (cram a screwdriver in, crank the seal out) took nearly an hour for each part.
But now it's done. And even though I spent over ninety minutes removing these seals, I got the replacements installed in around ten. And similarly, the flywheel, clutch, and pressure plate have already been reinstalled and torqued, and the transmission is ready to be reinstalled. And that means I've completed over a third of the reinstallation—and that's tight.
I'm planning on finishing this up before next week. Let's see how that turns out.
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