How-to: remove MTX75 from a D23. - Ford Forums - Mustang Forum, Ford Trucks, Ford Focus and Ford Cars

**djzx3** · 11-15-2011, 13:23

To remove the MTX 75 trans out of the Ford focus equipped with a Duratec engine, there will be some tools you will need first.

. A good range of Metric sockets, and wrenches.
. A slide hammer for the half shaft.
. A good length flex bar.

All other tools besides these^ are tools most people tackling this job would have, like a sledge hammer, jacks, jack stands, stuff like that.

So you will probably want to do a project like this in a garage on flat level ground so that the car can be jacked up to a comfortable height to get the trans out from under the car.

After the car is jacked up on jack stands, start by removing the battery to kill all power, after that you would want to take the air intake off.

In the case of a aftermarket CAI or SRI, there should just be a clamp to un-screw with a flat headed screw driver, the clamp will be right near the Throttle body. and then you can un-hook the MAF sensor, and pull out the air intake.

In the case of a stock air intake, you might have to un-do more then one clamp to get it out, and also un-do the MAF sensor.

After that it would be a good idea to stand and look and draw out which wire goes where. Even taking pic's help, or do both, I did, and it helped so much when putting it back together.

After you are sure you got everything accounted for, then you can start un-pluging wire's. There are two main wiring harnesses that go across the trans.

One comes up from the bottom, and has the o2 sensor plugs on it, along with the wire's that go to the speed sensor, and EGR piping that runs along side the top right of the block on top of the thermostat housing.

Note: There is a box on the right side of the head that is called the thermostat housing, well yes it is like a housing for a thermostat, but the real thermostat is under the intake manifold.

The second bunch of wires comes mainly from the fuse box in the engine bay, from there it runs to things such as the MAF sensor, the cruise control, and their is a wire that has a big plug on it that connects to another big plug on the top of the valve cover. It runs the third o2 sensor, the spark plugs, the fuel rail, and some other sensors on the other side of the block that don't matter right now.

So after you can see the trans and find the Master cylinder to slave cylinder line and un-hook it, you can now go under and begin removing the sub-frame.

This will require you to remove both knuckles, and axle's, so when removing the lower control arm from the knuckle, you will most likely find that you can get the nut off, but the bolt won't budge, in this case you will need to remove the lower control arm with the knuckle, and put it into a vise and then hit the bolt out, and buy a new lower ball joint, that will come with new pins, and bolts to secure it to the control arm after you grind out the old ribbets.

Once you have both knuckles off, you will need to remove the axles, now the passenger is easy, just pull it out by hand. But the driver side axle will require you to use the slide hammer.( at the end I will post pics of my tools and build when I did this)

After both axles are out, you can start to tie the steering rack up to some thing in the engine bay, because when you remove the sub-fame, the steering rack will either need to come out with, or stay up. I kept mine up, and just slowly un-did the bolts as I lowered the sub-frame. And don't forget about the torque mount, but that is easy to get out, just two bolt. Then mine as well go remove the three bolts holding the starter on as well. Again, very easy.

After the sub-frame is lowered and out of the way, you can put a jack under the trans, and un-do the trans mount, leaving the motor mount on, but do loosen it a little for more movement for when you lower the trans side down to get the trans out.

When I lowered the trans to get it at a angle that would allow us to easily get the trans out, I would have to say I lowered the trans side somewhere around 2-3 inch's before it would be a easy take out.

Note: Trans drain bolt is on back of diff, and fill hole is on the front, fill it to within a finger nail of the fill hole.

After you got you trans on the ground, inspect the clutch and flywheel, take the cover plate off, and if it looks like this.

Then you have a Dual Mass flywheel which is common to see in the focus.

This leaves you with a pretty big decition, because you can either fork out anywhere from $800-$1100 on just a new Dual Mass Fywheel which should be changed like a clutch.

Or you can try and find a conversion kit to a single piece flywheel which is way cheaper, some site's to check out for conversion kits would be like FSWERKS.com, or even CFM.com.

This is a conversion kit, which is what I went with from FSWERKS, this is their Exedy clutch kit.

And here are some pics of when I was doing this job.

Tools

Slide Hammer^. For half shaft.

And this is to help pull the axle out the knuckle.

Other then all this^, some important things must be done. Like the flywheel bolts must be replaced from Ford.

Do not just use your lock tight on the old FLYWHEEL bolts.

The new one's you get from Ford come with a special high impact lock tight on them, that is not even available to mechanic shops.

I hope this help some people to change there clutch.

Djzx3

**djzx3** · 11-15-2011, 13:36

O and if you are like me and like to clean everything when you do a job like this.

I recommend using black appliance paint from Home Depot. I used it on my sub-frame and lower control arms, and it looks great, a buddy of mine said he used to use it on his buggy, and the only time it got chipped is when he hit a rock.

Here is a pic of it all back together with the sub-frame and control arms on. I guess time will tell if it will hold up? I'll report back on this^ in a couple of months to let you all know how it held up.

NOTE: To see more about this project and when I did it, visit my thread that I started, it might help a little more.
2.3l Duratec, Slave cylinder+clutch kit time?

**djzx3** · 11-27-2011, 17:04

Note: When bleeding the slave cylinder, be very patient, it took me nearly a hour to vacuum suck it to the bleed screw, and then probably another 30-60 clutch pedal pumps to get it fully bleed.

Only use vacuum gun to get it to the screw, you will see a little stream come out right off the bat, It's not until you really start seeing it flowing through the clear tube that you want to stop and pump the clutch the rest of the way.

Ford recommends do a reverse bleeding where you push fluid through the bleed screw into the system and watch the bubbles come out the res, but from my research I have found this method to be very bad for the slave cylinder and master cylinder.

I would not suggest reverse bleeding.