I have a problem here I've never seen before. My son has a 72 Spitfire for
the street, we picked it up last year and only out a 1000 miles at most on
since then. His clutch disk broke last week, when we pulled the tranny off
the car all that was left of the clutch was the center hub, the rest was
worn down and broken off. The pressure plate had groves worn in it over a
1/4 inch deep, the flywheel was fine. I figured the clutch had been on it's
way out for a while which explained the hard shifting he had. I bought a
new pressure plate, clutch disk and throw out bearing, cleaned everything
up, changed the tranny oil and put it back together. We had replaced the
clutch master and slave cylinders over the winter due to leakage, so all
the wearable parts of the clutch system are new.
We fired it up today and I couldn't engage it in gear. I shut the engine
off, was able to run through the gears and tried to start it up with it in
gear. With the clutch pressed all the way in, to the floor boards, it
wouldn't completely disengage, the car would creep forward unless my foot
was on the brake. When I did let the clutch out, there was a grinding noise
and shuddering as the pedal came up. Once it was in gear, the noise stopped
and I was able to shift gears.
I pulled the slave cylinder and made sure the pin to the throw out bearing
arm was engaged properly to the internals of the slave and it was. I worked
the pedal and I had at least an inch of movement on the piston. We put it
back together and watched the operation, the arm was moving forward. In
case there was any air left in the system from the cylinder replacement, we
bleed it again. I made sure the slave was positioned as far forward in the
notch and the collar was tight so there was maximum throw on the arm, still
no good.
Looking back, I'm thinking that we had an existing problem that caused the
old clutch to wear abnormally and fall apart. We're going to pull the
engine again tomorrow and check the throw out bearing arm for bends or
cracks although a casual inspection and cleaning when I had it out didn't
raise any suspicion. It looked like the tranny had been removed before,
there were some newer bolts in the housing but the guy I bought it from
never used the car, it was a project that he picked up a few years ago, so
I have no way of contacting the owner who did the work to compare notes
with him on what he saw or did.
Does anyone have any ideas on this? Anything I should check either before
the engine gets pulled or after? Could I have the wrong diameter slave
cylinder? Would that cause me to lose some throw? I replaced what was there
but I don't know off hand which size I have on there.
thanks
mike
63 Spitfire race car
70 GT6
71 Spitfire
72 Spitfire
79 Spitfire
80 Spitfire
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