After the hood, I decided to prepare for the car’s first drift event at Drift Central (@driftcentral_official) in February, I had about a month to prepare. It sucks spending money on things you can’t really see but it must be done! Along with the PBM stuff my girlfriend (@therizzamejia) bought me for my birthday, she also got me an Exedy OEM replacement clutch kit. Lets still keep in mind that I still don’t have a clue of the wonders of working on cars. I didn’t even really know how to drop the subframe without the help of @justinzenki and @longboi.wav.
Sorry in advance for the bad photos, I’m grabbing some of these off of my old Instagram stories. I ended up picking up five Nissan Oil filters and drain plug gaskets ($60), a Greddy drain plug gasket ($20) a new knock sensor and subharness ($20, this was probably unnecessary but I had a CEL), ARP flywheel and pressure plate bolts ($100), 50mm spacers for the front ($65, the offset on the front AVS was so high the inner barrels were practically touching eachother, roast me), a pilot bushing, a flywheel ($100) and a Buddy Club Spec 2 catback that was modified to a dual tip exit ($150). Also the “new” differential I got was also howling, I’ll get to that later.
The install day was essentially trial by fire, I had heard horror stories of working on clutches and how it’s one of the hardest things you can ever do – I was absolutely terrified and riddled with anxiety. Luckily I had the expertise of Justin (@justinzenki), Anthony (@not240), Ian (@longboi.wav), and Max (@themaxpowa). How the hell do you even drop a transmission? I started off the day bright and early, ready to get the car into my garage and put it on stands. Simple enough, right? Nope, battery died, off to Walmart!
We grabbed a new battery ($60), car fired right up and we got right to work. Because I had no idea what I was doing, and the old transmission’s drain plug was seized, the whole process of just dropping the transmission took nearly six hours. Eventually we finally conquered the beast and got the hard part out of the way – or so I thought..
This thing was disgusting! I was so excited to get rid of the rattling coming from the throwout bearing. Removing the old clutch assembly, in theory, should be the easiest part of this process. I gunned off every bolt and left the flywheel on so that I could remove the old pilot bushing. I opted to go buy a tool from Autozone ($40) because specialty tools are always convenient to have. The bushing removal tool was moved to position, ready to extract the old piece – all I had to do was turn a nut and it was out! Well, that’s what was supposed to happen at least. Turns out the tool’s grabbing arms are too rounded off for the KA24DE pilot bushing and needs to be shaved. Popped right out after this change!
I threw on the new clutch assembly with the ARP bolts and called it a night after that: 
The next day I actually managed to poke the transmission into the clutch on my own, it took the help of Marcus (@marcusisrad) to get it completely in. Putting everything back in and cleaning up essentially took the rest of the day but it was finally done! The best part? The rattling from the “throwout bearing” was still there.
I learned a lot from this, but the preparation is still not done! We’re at $10,990, not too shabby!
1997 Nissan 240sx 