Keith, installed the new 265-inch Ardun minus the 4-71 blower in #124
roadster a couple weeks ago. My lifting tackle fits the bottom manifold
plate the same as the Ardun valley cover so this is the best approach.
First job was to test the Tilton hydraulic throwout bearing. Last time
I ran the car at Maxton I had this in there and it worked fine, but I
tried for a more ideal setup adjustment this time and ended up with
.030" twixt the throwout bearing face and the fingers on the 3200 lb B&B
10.5" racing clutch. My 85-year-old-ex-civilian- Navy-aviation-mechanic
pal helped me by turning the back wheel and yelling "Free!" and
"Locked!" while I sat in the cockpit pushing in the clutch pedal with
the gearbox in top gear, to evaluate the pedal action and the freeing
and engagement of the clutch. This involves a hydraulic throwout
bearing with slave cylinder replacing the front bearing retainer on the
Super T-10 four-speed, and takes a lot of patience to set up. The slave
piston only has a working stroke of .750", and a lot of that is needed
to fully release the clutch. Obviously several things are involved here,
pedal stroke, master cylinder size, and the type of gearbox and clutch.
Tilton makes two lengths of slave piston to cover the variations. If
you guess wrong the slave piston can pop out the front of the cylinder!
Rich Fox of this list wisely told me to start with Tilton's biggest mc.
That all checked out and the latest has been assembling the "Hayseed" -
style built-up blower manifold which is held together and sealed with
fasteners and Ultra Blue. Dave Thomssen's design is very clever here,
and he used it with a 6-71 for the "World's Fastest Ardun". I had to
alter it to suit the shorter 4-71.
All of this stuff for an Ardun is home-made and very slow(it takes me a
whole day, for example, to make a bracket to mount my NAPA locking choke
cable end on my Hilborn pump to operate the fuel valve), but if
everything keeps going in a favorable direction I hope to have the car
down to Maxton this season. Bill Hoddinott
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