The previous owner of the car inherited a bad clutch. The desire from them was to flip the car for a profit once the clutch was fixed. Now they either saw how bad of shape the car was and was trying to cut their losses or the city took action on thier "car lot" as they had 6 cars for sale out in front of their house that could keep two cars in the driveway.
After the roll cage was finished attention turned to making the car drivable again. The first step was to fix the fried clutch. After about 4 hours three of us had the transmission off. Since none of the team knew what they were doing we followed the factory service manual supplied from a first gen crx/ 3rd gen civic board
Red Pepper Racing. If you are interested in 1 gen CRX or 3rd Gen Civics join this group! They are nothing but helpful and hardcore about these machines. Tell'em Apexed sent you.
The old clutch (left picture) had for sure seen better days. You can see how the friction material has been worn pretty much down to the metal fasteners.
Here are some other pictures of the transmision/clutch removal. Not much to note in these pictures just some random pictures trying to document the occasion.
Shown is the highly calibrated block of wood and bottle jack that supported the motor after the transmission mounts had been removed. The clutch pressure plate is visible.
Transmission housing after removal and cleaning. There was about 22 years of dried oil and clutch dust cakeing the inside of the bell housing. This should have been a sign of things to come, however these signs were ignored. But more on that later.
One note to anyone who may be removing the transmission in their CRX or civic, the pin that holds the shift linkage to the transmission can be a real pain to remove and reinstall. The solution is to just drop the shifter and the torque tube next to it when you remove the transmission. It can be a slight pain, but it saved us quite a bit of time. Also you might think you can get away with a bolt to replace the roll pin that holds the universal joints, do not do this. There is a taper to the hole and using a bolt will result in a sloppy shifter. The car came to us with a bolt in place of the roll pin and while the shifter was in gear you could move the shift lever left and right like it was in neutral. Just a note to any of you fellow 1/3 gens out there.
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