Messed Up Bell Housing Bolts
 

Hi everyone,

In short: I've made mistakes, wondering how bad they are.

Background info: the throw out bearing completely went in my BRZ, and I thought I could drop the transmission, replace it and the clutch myself. I had some serious trouble getting the transmission on and off, and a lot of frustration-induced bad decision-making ensued. The car is back together and I went for a tiny test drive, but two of the bell housing connections are seriously messed up.

One of the nuts on the bottom studs started turning really hard about halfway through. I kept drawing it up, not knowing what else to do, and cracked a piece off the corner of the engine by continuing to draw it up. It's drawn up, but obviously that's bad. The piece that chipped off is the outer corner around the stud, I'd say it's maybe around the size of a nickel.

The bolt on the top driver's side will not draw up. It turned hard the entire way, but didn't know what else to do so I continued to tighten it. It's a ways in now and set up so bad I don't dare try to turn it anymore. The head of the bolt is maybe 2mm away from actually contacting the housing.

I guess I'm wondering how bad you all perceive this to be. I'm imagining there's a spectrum of bad-ness between "do NOT drive it again until you've fixed this" to "well, yeah, that's quite bad, but it is drivable, just take it easy".

The issue being that the car is currently my daily driver and only vehicle. I had planned to have another car before attempting this, but my new car is unsurprisingly very late to be delivered and the throw out bearing was completely shot.

Poor choices I know I made were A) prying excessively hard to pull the transmission off (it was set up on something else and I didn't realize it) and B) drawing the transmission back on with the bolts (couldn't get it to go back on otherwise and I still don't understand why).

Other miscellaneous info about the vehicle: 2015 BRZ, 100k miles, winter driven every year I've owned it. Supercharger and other standard bolt-ons. So needless to say it's not otherwise brand-new, if that affects the answer at all.

Thank you very much for the advice.

O' Boy !!! Lil late but if a Fastner that you know is not tight feels tight..stop. As afar as driveabilty IDK. If not leaking any fluid and it moves without making weird noises try a gentle drive to see if it feels and sounds OK. Take it to a repair shop as soon as you get a new car. Do not attempt more mechaic work....not for you

22R

Not sure what to tell you. Damaging the engine is obviously a bad thing to do. Images would help a lot. You can already see the damage from the missing piece of engine. With regard to the bolt that's not seating fully, I'm going to gander that you likely stripped out the threads of the engine block.
- The missing material may or may not matter. It might take time, effort, and possibly some money to fix the bung threads on the engine block. Would consult an experienced mechanic on it.


Forcing a transmission on could mean many things. You could also have pushed the pilot bearing out of the flywheel if things were misaligned enough. If you missed an alignment pin, then the transmission may not have not been fully clocked in and seated. The bell housing should be flat against the engine once everything is seated. All the bolts should thread on easy and the bell housing should draw toward the engine without too much effort.


The mistake most people make when working on the transmission was that they did not support the front of the engine. When you take the transmission out, the engine has no rear support and flops forward. This means the flywheel side is pointing slightly upward. When you work with the transmission from underneath, it's only practical for the transmission to be straight-and-level or pointing slightly downward. That means they are hopelessly misaligned. You'll have to rely on a lot of luck to get them back into alignment without this knowledge, or some help with getting the engine back to level.

Hello tobsadness and welcome to our forum - :clap:

That is a tough first post - :confused0068:

I suggest you take your car into a transmission shop and have them "fix" the messed up bolts and other parts.

Sorry, but that ain't gonna be cheap - :(

Depending on where you live in NY, I would suggest AZP in new jersey.