I just helped a buddy get a 92 Dakota 2 wheel drive with the 3.9L V6. Was told it was going to need a clutch pretty soon but was still drivable. Made it about 5 miles then it quit & couldn't move under its own power.
We pulled it to my house with my 92 Dakota 4x4, V6 & auto trans which runs great.
The 2 wheel drive one has the 5 speed standard with the V6. I'm pretty sure the clutch is fried and will need a new one. I have never replaced a clutch before and neither has my buddy that bought the truck. He's short on funds since his wife just had twins a week ago, a boy and a girl and all 3, mom and babies are doing fine.
Any who, would it be better to try and replace the clutch ourselves? Or pay somebody $300 to do it? I'm a so so mechanic & can do the basics alright but never did a clutch before. My buddy is about the same and neither one of us has done any major mechanical repair.
Would it be a bad idea for us to try to replace the clutch in this ourselves? Or should I talk him into taking it to my mechanic that said he would do it for $300 plus the clutch kit? Need a answer/suggestion soon as possible.
Thanks!

 

If you have a manual and can follow instructions, it's really not a difficult job at all. You'll need to jack it up pretty high so you have room to work, and it would be better if you had a transmission jack (though I've used the "bench press" method several times with success), but other than that, you just need basic hand tools.

You'll probably want to get the flywheel surfaced at a machine shop, but if it's in great shape (unlikely with a fried clutch), you can probably get a way with "de-glazing" it with some sandpaper.

 

like tom said its not that hard if you have a manual to follow. the most time consuming part of the job is getting the splines on the trans and the flywheel.

 

With two people and a service manual, it should be a breeze. When you get ready to drop the trans have one person on each side of it with the jack underneath (of course) and you should be able to balance it easily and pull/drop the trans out. And as the Haynes manuals say installation is the reverse of removal LOL.

Like Shadow said getting the splines to line up is usually the most frustrating part of the job.

 

Yup, I agree, a clutch is a very easy job, just can be time consuming, but in a RWD vehicle should be very straightforward. I just did a clutch in a FWD car and while the work is very straightforward, it is just a very tight space to work in, and you have to disassemble the vehicle alot more. On a RWD truck you're working in the wide open (relatively speaking).

As was said you'll probably wrestle with getting the splines to line up, just don't force anything. It should all slide together nicely without having to force anything together to much.

 

and be careful not to over tighten the bolts for the u-joints. speaking from experience, of course.

 

get a alignment tool that centers the clutch plate and aligns the splines. is just a plastic tool you stick the the center of the clutch plate before tightening up the pressure plate. the tranny should slide in fairly easy then.

 

Lots of aftermarket clutch kits come with the alignment tool. Check to see if yours does before you buy one.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions and information. I got the book on the early Dakota's but the information is kinda incomplete and the pictures are all but useless. Specially when the one that would be the most helpful is of the strait 4 when we are working on the V6.
One thing that's confusing is it says to take out the transmission but leave the clutch housing on the motor. I take it that's the bell housing? But we cant find any way to take out the transmission without taking the bell housing with it.
According to the book, after removing the transmission, and leaving the clutch housing on the motor, you then go to the section on removing the clutch housing and clutch. But we haven't got that far.
My friend has got the exhaust disconnected from the headers and moved over under the passenger side out of the way. Has dropped the drive shaft from the back of the transmission and removed the cross-member from under the transmission. Has removed all the bolts, (10 or 12 of them?) that hold the bell housing or clutch housing to the engine block and has disconnected everything else from the transmission. But it still wont come loose from something and drop down so we can get it out from under the truck. The bell housing or clutch housing, which ever you want to call it, will pull back about 3" inches from the motor. From above I can see down between the back of the motor and the firewall, in a gap between the motor and bell housing, I can see a shaft inside the housing and it seems to be what is keeping the whole thing from coming loose so we can get the transmission out. That shaft will change the direction its pointing when moving the transmission around. But it won’t move towards the back of the truck or back into the motor. I cant see it well enough to tell if it has splines on it or not.
Now, is the transmission and clutch housing &/or bell housing supposed to come out together? If so, how? Does anybody have any photo's of what its supposed to look like?
If the transmission is supposed to come out by itself without the bell housing/clutch housing, how and where is it disconnected from the housing?
Since we cant get the transmission completely disconnected and out I cant even imagine how we will be able to get a new clutch installed and then get the transmission installed back onto the engine right.
I worked as a machinist for most of my life, over 20 years, till I blew out my lower back. So I'm familiar with working on and with machines. But I haven't ever been into replacing a transmission or clutch before. At this point I don't know if we could even get the pieces boxed up, the transmission supported good enough, (and remove the drive shaft) so we could tow it to my mechanics shop so it could actually be done by somebody that knows what they are doing. [:-Þ

 

the hardest part for me was dropping the exhaust and getting it outta the way getting the splines lined up is cake.