More adventures in trying to get my Healey on the road. After
getting the clutch linkage reassembled, I found that I couldn't
get any clutch disengagement, even with the linkage adjusted all
the way out. Visions of the clutch fork pins (I had to make one
up by grinding something else into shape) shearing or slipping,
or the throwout bearing disintegrating (one of those solid
carbon jobs, which I didn't replace because it looked OK and I
didn't want to spend the $25), danced through my head, since it
was going to mean pulling out the transmission/OD again. Bummer.
(Can anybody guess what's wrong at this point?)
So I started disassembling things again, starting with the
clutch linkage, and noticed something about the release lever
on the side of the bell housing. This is a flat lever with a
slotted hole in it that matches the squared-off end of the
clutch release cross-shaft. Is the slot lined up with the
axis of the lever? Nooooooo! It's off by about ten degrees,
and there is nothing to prevent a mechanical innocent from
installing it backwards, creating a difference of about 20
degrees in orientation, enough to exceed the adjustment
available in the next rod in the linkage. And as we all
know, the rule of thumb with LBCs states: If there are
two ways to assemble something, only one of which will work,
the odds are ten to one that it will be assembled wrong.
So now the clutch releases OK, but the bracket I made for
the return spring is too long. I pulled the brake master
cylinder off to see what's going on there, but it all seems
almost trivial now that I don't face the immediate prospect
of removing the gearboxes again. Onward!
[I just took another look in my original manual, and it does
show the release lever with the slot offset from the lever
centerline. It looks like the exploded drawing is wrong on
which way it should go, but then the drawing is for the
right-hand-drive version, with the lever on the right side.
So when I relate this to my car, should I mentally slide the
lever straight through to the other side, or should it be
a mirror image? Oh well, whatever you do is likely to be
wrong anyway. That's what makes it so much fun, right?]
Jim Beckman AT&T, Middletown, NJ att!mtqub!jeb
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