'02 NV3550 Manual Trans Removal?

[ebelements]

Hello all!

A little while ago I fired up the KJ to the sound of a high pitched/random metallic sound in the bell housing. Pretty sure the clutch is the culprit(or pieces of it), as I'm at 165k on the original. Sourced a new clutch, flywheel(just in case), and a copy of the service manual, which to be 100% honest isn't really as big a help as I would have hoped. So at this point I'm removing the bell housing bolts, and have come to a pretty decent head-scratching moment. How the hell do I get to the top 2 (or perhaps four?) bell housing bolts? I can feel one of them, which is just behind some sort of wiring loom, but I can't for the life of me figure out how I'd actually get a tool back there. Any help would be SEVERELY appreciated.

Also, I haven't pulled the transfer case from the trans(I did drain it)… any reason why I perhaps should?

Additionally, and this is more of a gripe than anything else… what @$$hole at daimlerchrysler was in charge of the rear transmission cross member? Not only did I have to cut off the trans skid bolts, but almost every crossmember bolt was either rusted to whatever captive hardware is in the rails or was so corroded that they were half the diameter they once were, and snapped off. I'm seriously surprised I drove it this way the past year. The messed up part of all this is that the bottom of the truck looks really good, even for one that spent 99% of its life in northern Ohio.

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Guess who now has a great reason to buy a MIG welder?

 

[CactusJacked]

I just dropped my trans to replace the clutch. Mine was making an awful noise too, and it was the pilot bearing being totally disintegrated. Clutch still had a little life left (134k miles on it), and the throwout bearing was dry and noisy. And yeah, tell me about it, many of the crossmember and crash pan bolts were a fight to get loose. Captive nut rivets that can spin, what a brilliant idea! 3 out of 4 of the long crossmember bolts were rusted to much smaller their original diameter, worse than yours.
Anyway, what you want to do, assuming you have the driveshaft off, is get a floor jack on the back part of the transfer case, remove the crossmember, and lower the jack a bit to tilt the whole engine/trans assembly down. Then you'll be able to easily get at the upper bellhousing bolts. Also make note of which bellhousing bolt goes where, there are 3 different sized ones. Before removing all the bolts, I put wood blocking, about 2" thick, between the engine oil pan and the crossmember below it. Make sure you span the pan completely, and you won't dent it. That supports the engine once the trans is out. I picked up a tilting trans jack from Harbor Freight, and with the brackets that comes with it, I was able to bolt the jack directly to the crossmember mount pad on the trans. Worked like a charm. I then lowered the trans with the jack, and slid it back out of the way. There's no need to totally remove the trans from underneath, which would require jacking the Jeep more to the sky to slide it out. Once you get the trans off, take a good look at the end of the input shaft where the pilot bearing rides. Mine got a channel worn into it from the stray bearing needles. I'm putting in a longer pilot bearing, so that it rides in front of and in back of where the original bearing was riding, and the bearing will then span the worn area. On mine, the stock sized replacement bearing would make for a sloppy fit on the shaft, which isn't good.