1995 Toyota Celica Pilot Bearing?

Is is possible that this car doesn’t take a Pilot Bearing? It is a 2.2 engine, manual trans,front wheel drive. I took apart to install new clutch there was no pilot bearing there --and it doesn’t look like there is room for one. Wondering if anyone has worked on one and would know whether it would take one or not?

Appreciate any help! Thank You.

Yes.

Some crankshafts don’t have a pilot bearing for the input shaft for the transmission.

Tester

What’s the diameter of the transmission mainshaft compared to the inside diameter of the hole in the crankshaft?

There surely should be something there to keep the mainshaft from bouncing around. It’s difficult to see a mainshaft being allowed to ride steel to steel on the crankshaft.

I looked up several parts site clutch kits and some of them show a pilot bearing included with the kit.

Your Celica does have a pilot bearing. Check the transmission input shaft and the inside of the crank. It’s there. I found several sources for pilot bearings including Rock Auto and Autozone. The bearing may be stuck on the end of the shaft or inside the crank.

Is it more like a bushing, @missileman ?

It is not good practice to put your email address on an open web site. Your answers will be on this thread.

From what I can the 2.2 has a pilot bearing of some kind or another. Since you say there is’t room for one, I suspect it is there inside the end of the crankshaft and you just aren’t seeing it b/c of gunk in the way. Clean that area off thoroughly and you’ll probably see it.

Are you thinking of replacing it? Removing pilot bearings can be a little tricky from what I’ve heard here. If you want to remove it, ask the experts here how best to do it.

The way that I remove pilot bearings is easy. Pack it with bearing grease and insert the proper size dowel and smack the dowel with a hammer. It usually takes 3 or 4 tries before the bearing pops out.

I have seen some pilot bearing that were bearings in name only texases. They were actually brass bushings more or less. See below:

Same here, maybe the OP was expecting something like this;

Or this:

There isn’t a pilot bearing shown in the service manual. The image of the input shaft has no pilot area extending beyond the splined part of the shaft.

Post a picture of the input shaft on your transmission.

A look at several Celica transmissions on eBay (not that year) also show a splined shaft to the end which would mean no pilot bearing or bushing so Nevada_245 is correct.

That seems to be a strange way of doing things to me as the only support for the mainshaft would be the front mainshaft bearing. One would think that over time the stress on the bearing would cause it to wear some extent and clutch chatter would set in.

Found a Russian youtube on replacing a '95 Celica transmission, clearly showed the lack of a pilot on the mainshaft. So yeah, seems like it’d be rough on the transmission mainshaft bearings.

Take note, this is a transaxle and as such does not have an input gear, counter gear cluster, and main shaft which a longitudinal transmission would have. Being a transverse arrangement, it has an input shaft, output shaft, and final drive/differential. The input shaft has ball bearings at either end of the gears. The lateralmost usually sets the positioning of the shaft and takes the thrust. The bearing closest to the clutch spines is either a roller bearing or ball bearing that can float axially. Also, appreciate that the clutch forces are minimal compared to the separation forces caused by the engaged gear pairs (there is no direct HIGH passthrough in a transaxle).

I was concerned about any runout of the unguided clutch disc causing engine vibration. But if the input shaft spline level runout was less that a few thousandths, it still would be tighter than the clearance on a worn pilot bushing. I have never felt an engine vibration that could be attributed to an off axis clutch disc.

The '92 Celica, formerly mine, but sold to a friend, also had this same arrangement. The splined shaft to the transaxle had no pilot shaft for a bearing or bushing. But, it is still on the road with some 360k miles on it and just had it’s 5th clutch installed last fall.

I have seen some pilot bearing that were bearings in name only texases. They were actually brass bushings more or less. See below:

GM used that type for years.