Removing primary clutch with the engine still in a conquest

[Coast2Coast]

The service manual says just pull the clutch off and the body of the argo has enough give to pull it off the shaft. Nope, not on my machine. I tried for an hour this morning to remove it from my 97 conquest but it just doesn't have enough room to come off of the pto shaft. It looks like I'll have to pull the motor to remove the clutch. I've seen videos of guys just popping them off and on like nothing. I don't get it.

[JohnF]

I lever with a 2x4. You have to get enough space to roll it out of there. There is quite a bit of room outside the tub in that area so I used a heat gun to soften the tub and mold a relief in that area so now I can pull the clutch out in less than a minute.

Go slow, it doesn't take much.

[Coast2Coast]

Awesome it worked, thanks! I was thinking about using a bottle jack to do the same thing but for some reason I don't seem to have any around, must have lost them in the last move or something. I hope I never ever have to take it off again though, I don't think anyone will ever get it off of their again. Took me twice as long to get it back on afterwards.

It slid freely on the PTO when I removed it, but putting it back on I had to pound the living piss out of it to get it all the way on the shaft. I tried anti seize when I put it back on but I thought that was making it too hard to move so I cleaned it all off. I took the clutch off and on about 10 times trying different things with the keyway but nothing worked to make it easier to slide back on. I've never seen a key slide so freely in both keyways, usually they are dam near impossible to remove on other machines I've worked on so they stay in place perfectly and make for easy installation of flywheels, etc. So in the end I just went for broke, put a little light oil on it and pounded it on with a 2' pry bar and a hammer. I'll be the first to admit I should never work on anything, I get too frustrated and just start pounding at stuff, but I'm too dam cheap to pay someone else to do it hahah.

Anyway I drove it around and I think my poking and proding made the clutch run worse than it did before, so I'm just gonna leave it and just give in to the fact that she's just old and not what she used to be.

I noticed that the belt flops around like crazy at all speeds when I move up and down through the RPM ranges in neutral. Is that normal? It doesn't seem to be any looser than it should be. It's tight enough that it's always spinning the secondary clutch at idle.