That's why it's so helpful to me to get help and advice here. So, I intend to get things corrected properly this time and hope I don't need to bother with the clutch again for a long time. Not a whole lot of fun this time of year as I need heat my garage with a woodstove, and making a fire and tending to it takes up time when I'd rather be working on the car. However, at this time, the issue is a slipping clutch, not chatter, so the work needs to get done. Interestingly, I've never had chatter in reverse and the little I still have (since I changed the slave cylinder) improves a lot once everything is warmed up If it's caused the pilot bearing to wallow out, that might be a cause of chatter. I've often wondered if some of my clutch trouble may have come from a bad alignment. Without any one to consult with, I made an assumption that the Lakewood recommendations concerning alignment were more of a cover-your-arse thing. I did this work in the mid 1990's which was before the internet was around, or at least not in the way we know it today. One thing I didn't do was check the bell-housing alignment. I have mentioned I had previously checked the clutch, and that was easy as I had the engine out for some work. So, in order to separate the two, I will need to work on it once it's out of the car. It went in OK, but not as easily as I thought. instead of getting it out, I used the mounting bolts to pull the transmission in. I tried sanding the paint off the bell-housing and smoothing things out, and tried again. The cast circle on the front of the transmission only went about 1/2 way into the bell-housing hole.
With the bell-housing installed, I attempted to install the transmission. It was mostly stupid as I knew at the time it was wrong. Because I did a rather stupid thing when I put all this together many years ago. I have to remove the seats and tunnel and then remove the transmission with bell-housing as one unit. I hope to get started on the disassembly as soon as possible, but it's going to take a while. If they do not, I intend to look into the options available a bit more.
the 500 series one that seems so well recommended in this thread. If my pressure plate and flywheel check out, I hope to get away with just a new disc. Mcleod no longer makes the flywheel (for 410, 428) but I think their 390 flywheel is the same, but without the offset weight.
I remember the flywheel did have some other PP bolt pattern on it, but I never gave that much thought. I last checked the clutch about 4000 miles ago (over 8000 miles on it now) and other than discolouration of the disc, everything looked almost new.
They sent me a free replacement (still stuck with the return shipping). Had to send it to them on my own nickel and they reported it was bad and one of theirs but it left their factory years ago and they had no idea where it had been all this time. I contacted McLeod and they said they don't authorize anyone to sell their products on Amazon (should have asked about Ebay) and they thought it might be a fake. Amazon said it was past their 30 day free return policy. The seller said nothing they could do -send it to McLeod. It had uneven engagement and chattered like a SOB. The one McLeod pressure plate I had a problem with I bought off of Amazon. They rubber banded the weights tight but implied that basically compromised the accuracy of the balancing.Īnother lesson learned - don't buy clutch components off of Amazon (probably goes for a lot of other major parts also). I have an 11 inch one sitting in my garage out of my Corvette with about 500 miles on it that I removed after a machine shop said they would try balancing it but they hated those clacking weights as it drove their balance equipment sensors nuts.