Pulling Transmission

[Budgetman72]

Question to the Fiero experts & gear heads,
1) my 86 GT had a recent 3800 swap with the factory Muncie 4 speed, i noticed the clutch starting to slip recently on hard runs, clutch is a “Spec 3+” less than 10k miles on it, there is oil dripping out of bell housing, engine side of flywheel is clean, engine oil is still clear as well as transaxle oil, the oil dripping out is black. My guess is the input shaft seal is bad and getting oil on clutch. Am I on the right track? And if it is that seal is this typical failure or should i be looking at a more serious trans issue?

2) I understand that i’ll need to pull the trans regardless and it will be my first attempt at it, I was reading up on how to’s and came across a forum on how to do a half cradle drop just to pull trans out, has anyone done this? The reason i ask is that i dont have any heavy lifts to raise my Fiero high enough to drop the entire cradle.

Thx,

[Fierofool]

If both engine and transmission oil is black, I can't imagine where black oil would be coming from.  Possible contamination from clutch dust after the oil leaves the engine or transmission?  Manual transmission oil should never turn black even if never changed throughout the life of the vehicle. 

I have that stock pushrod, whenever you want it. 

I've heard good and bad on pulling a trans with partial cradle drop, but not having done a transmission pull, I won't comment. 

[TopNotch]

I dropped the whole cradle to replace my transmission. The article is here. It's on a duke, but the basic process is the same.
BTW, my aging Harbor Freight shop crane was beginning to slip a little on that job. I was fearing that I was going to have to buy a new one. But it turns out that you can buy just a replacement hydraulic cylinder from Amazon for about $45. This time, I'm going to keep the cylinder in my garage, and only put it on the crane when needed. No need to expose it to weather.