So my poor Z has been out of commission since January with tranny problems, and with the weather warming up I started work on a long overdue 5 spd swap.
Thus far there have been many snags along the way mostly attributed to mutant Japanese rust on nuts and bolts.
A couple cans of PB Blaster and a few cuts and bruises later I managed to get everything to do with the old transmission off.
All except for the damned Auto Pilot Bushing.
The following tells the story of my long and arduous campaign against a chunk of metal and hopefully serves to guide others in avoiding my mistakes.
Now reading up on what everyone else did to remove it yielded mixed results.
I read everything from "use a slide hammer" to "stuff bread in the crank" to "dremel it out."
The fact that I have literally no money right now made getting a slide hammer out of the question, and I guess I lack the initiative (and the down payment) to rent one.
So I tried for the hydraulic pressure approach stuffing the depression in the crank with grease and using a plugged socket to try and force the bearing out.
I know this method works excellently for Manual Pilot Bushings, and I also know that a couple people have had success with it on the Auto, but it simply would not budge for me.
So I made a trip down to Harbor Freight to see what I could find on the cheap.
And to my surprise I found this gem:
Link: http://www.harborfreight.com/3-jaw-pilo ... -4876.html
At $16.99 it seemed to be exactly what I needed.
The problem was the teeth definitely did not catch on the bushing and after countless tries I gave up (partially because I broke the damn tool) and resorted to the dremel method.
I found countless pictures like this...
Not my photo
...and thought "Oh, that won't be too bad," I started by making two nice cuts like the photo. But with no results. The mystical stories of it collapsing in on itself didn't happen in my situation at all.
So, I probably spent a good 4 hours hacking away at the thing with dremel, chisel and drill while freaking out and praying that I don't jack up my crankshaft.
All to no avail. In any case I gave up again and slept on it. Then I thought, why weren't the teeth catching on the Harbor Freight puller?
Upon further inspection (which I should have done from the very, very start) I saw that this was happening:
Because the chamfer on the crank directly behind the bushing was so shallow, the shape of the puller would not allow the teeth to fit into the space made by the chamfer.
So I was able to replace the broken puller at H.F. due to some Limited Lifetime Warranty.
It was about this time when I started thinking straight and decided to take my dremel to the puller.
The result was this:
My thought process was that making these cuts would allow the teeth to fill the tiny gap made by the chamfer like so:
And sure enough, much to my delight the teeth caught and I pulled it out in 20 seconds.
Needless to say it was bittersweet. I was ecstatic that I finally got it out (and so easily) and yet so angry at myself for having wasted all my time doing this:
So, if you made it to the end of this post, thank you for taking the time to read my venting, and enjoy a $17 way to easily remove the Automatic Pilot Bushing.
And the swap continues:
Much Better!
