Clutch job from hell (and a question)

[Chris Scarpulla]

Blew up my clutch last week
http://photos.lycos.com/s.asp?r=165j7oogvkpkpdkjof8ic9dsi4_266501

(By the way, the pictures of the Black SE-R with white stripes isn't my
car, it's Ben Moses' ride getting measured by a spring
engineer from the company that's making the 300# front/200# rear B13
springs. Ask me for details if you're interested, the deal
closes this week). Sorry for the distraction :)

See the collar that the throwout bearing rides on (surrounding the input
shaft)? It got boogered up when the clutch detonated, and
we cleaned it up with a file and some emery cloth.

So I bought a Nissan Key Value clutch, and everything else I needed. Here's
the outcome as of Sunday afternoon.

Damn, this has not been fun. I got the flywheel cut, replaced both axle
seals, and the rear main (crank) seal, and cleaned up the
collar that the throwout bearing (TOB) rides on. Remember the pictures of
that collar? So after more hours than I thought it would
take, we got it buttoned back up Sunday afternoon. I noticed that there was
an awful lot of play in the clutch release arm, and knew
there was going to be trouble, but my buddy Bill gave it a good hard tug,
and something seemed to pop into place. I sat in the car,
pushed in the clutch (car's not running yet) and rowed through the gears...
no problem so far. The car is still up on jackstands,
and I start it up, put it in first, so far so good, push in the clutch, and
MARTHA FOCKER the pedal stays on the floor. There must
still be a bit of a lip on that collar that's catching the TOB, and
stopping the return spring from pulling it back. I'm at the
point now, that if I keep the pedal adjusted so that the clutch engages
about 1/4" off the floor, everything's OK, because I'm not
moving the TOB far enough for it to catch on the lip, but it's not right,
and we're going to tear it apart again Tuesday after work.
Hopefully I'll be able to get away with simply smoothing up that collar
enough so that the TOB doesn't catch on it.

DAMN this is a bitch. Since everything's fresh in our minds, and we don't
need to drop the exhaust, crossmember, flywheel, or driver
side axle, I'm hoping we can do it in about 5 hours. What kind if times are
you guys able to do a clutch R&R in (driveway job, no
lift)?

Chris