Yeah, the flywheel is really light. I'm worried it might be too light, but we'll see how it goes. I don't think the OEM clutch was all that great.

It was a proper weekend of wrenching. I've got the transmission down and am looking at the crankshaft. I've never lowered one like this before, it always seemed dangerous. A lot of work again, but not too bad. I didn't have to touch the exhaust which is great.

Saturday morning I removed driveshafts, the front heat shield, the rusted to s*** transmission crossmember, and the transfer case. I just left the front prop shaft attached to the case. I used the floor jack to lower the crossmember and the transfer case. It was actually quite graceful. I detached the sway bar from the end links and removed the bushings, but I still couldn't get it out, so I just tucked it all the way forward enough out of the way.

I put the engine support bar up so I could tilt it back, with a floor jack under the rear of the transmission for a bit while I loosened everything. I lost my good e14 socket on one of the top bolts. It fell off the wobble extension and went into another dimension. Later it was discovered way up there underneath the starter. Thankfully I have some junk etorx sockets in the drawer but they are bad and made me really nervous. Before I removed the bottom two e14s I swapped the floor jack for the small harbor freight transmission jack under the middle of it.

I knew about the starter dowel pin thing, I put a 4 mm Allen bit socket on the long extension and hit it with a hammer. But I guess I didn't hit it hard enough because everything still got hung up up there towards the starter. I had to hit it much harder a second time, then grab the starter with my hand and it freed everything up. Then I had to lift it back up so it would come off the splines straight the rest of the way, and finally right down. The hf jack was pretty good but I wouldn't want to try it with the transfer case attached.

There's a tiny bit of corrosion from the brake fluid in there but nothing that big of a deal. The clutch disc unfortunately is about mint, it was changed around 2021 and the car probably hasn't seen more than 10k miles. The flywheel looks original and is a bit of a wreck. The transfer case input and transmission output seals are good, I probably won't touch these, it's the shift rod seal that's been leaking.

The fork definitely was not clipped on all that well, the clip is flimsy like I thought. But there's the remnants of my failed slave cylinder install. All that for that. The rear main is not leaking but I'm going to do it anyway. I bought the whole cover thing so it will be easy. Tomorrow I'll do that and put the flywheel up. I need the holder tool and a couple other misc parts I forgot, then I'll do the bell housing stuff and put it all back up. Should finally be good.

Also since the transmission crossmember was rusted beyond repair I picked up a southern one from ebay, and throughout the week cleaned it and wet sanded it, hit it with the etch primer and black chassis paint. I should have used the flapper disc and got all those little imperfections from the casting off but it looks good. I also got some replacement yellow zinc bolts and washers from belmetric for the crossmember, as BMW wants $45 per bolt for those, again like the stiffening plate bolts.

I also have to figure out if I'm going to do the transfer case mount bushing or not. I have the parts sitting here. There are some tiny cracks in it but it's still okay. I think I can get it out with a couple relief cuts from the demo saw. Then to get it in put it in the freezer 24h and maybe figure something else out to press it in.

It's too hard to post pics on this site with the size problems so here's a link to the pictures I took, https://imgur.com/a/clutch-e53-29uVo12

Not sure why the crank has that green almost paint stuff on it what the hell is that. I can't imagine this is some sort of aftermarket crank. Or somebody did something to it. I've never seen the m54 crank from the factory.

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'05 E53 3.0 6mt
'17 F30 340ix 6mt
'96 E36 328is, in progress