Today, with the help of my friend Jim we went at it and tackled a number of things on the Brute. While I finished off mounting the Warn Winch Jim wrenched on the clutch. Sorry I didn’t shoot a picture of the winch mounted with the plastic piece replaced on the bumper, but you get the picture.

Here are the photos from the clutch work. Jim undid all the bolts going around the clutch cover and also loosened up the clamp around the snorkel. Last off he had to disconnect two wires that go to the clutch cover.

he then removed the stock belt, that was exciting. You should of seen how much play the worn out stock belt had.

After removing the belt it was time to install the new EPI clutch kit. High Lifter sells the kit if you are looking for one and they are really knowledgeable if you have any questions on which kit to get. The picture below is great. We didn’t have the tool to do the job so we built our own. 

We needed to compress the spring in order to remove the circlip. It also didn’t help that we didn’t have circlip pliers at the studio. Besides the circlip pliers you really need an impact gun to do this job.

after removing the circlip, I slowly got off the board I didn’t want that loaded spring to go flying off anywhere.

I removed the old spring grabbed the new EPI spring and put everything in place.

without the proper tools or my really desperate idea that somehow worked brilliantly I don’t think we would of been able to pull it off.

Look at Jim he is proud of our hack job. “DON’T try this at home those springs could pack a punch and seriously injure you.”

It was now time to reinstall everything.

The new belt was a task to put on. we found it easier to start from the bottom and turn the pulley clockwise bit by bit to get the belt to fall into place.

After doing the clutch I wanted to go out and test her out. except our machine was in limp mode and the belt check light needed to be reset. This step varies from year to year. On our ‘07 we had to take this dummy cable.

and plug it into the the black cable that matches. Black to grey and then grey to black.

you then had to unplug the two pin connector found next to your clutch cover.

the last step is you turn your key to the on position. the belt light should be blinking fast. you wait 5 seconds then plug the two pin connector back in. Turn your key back to the off position and unplug the black to grey and grey to black plugs and put them back the way they where. That’s it, my belt light was off and I had full power again. The install took a couple hours and was actually a lot easier then I thought. I was a little upset that the EPI instructions didn’t say anything about how to reset or that you might have to reset the belt light. I was lucky and figured it out quickly.