[T3] Clutch question
Jim Adney
jadney at vwtype3.org
Tue Aug 26 19:45:05 PDT 2014
Sarah is here! Yes, Sarah from Brooklyn, NY, who we met at the
Invasion, made it all the way to Wisconsin with Marigold, her '71
square. We had a number of things to try to sort out and one of them
was the clutch.
We think most of the other things are sorted out, but there's a
mystery in the clutch. When we got the engine out, the pressure plate
was a German F&S 3-arm diaphram spring pressure plate and the driven
disk was a Brazilian F&S spring center disk. Both appear to be
correct for her '71. (No center ring on the pressure plate.)
Keith thought this might be a Kennedy plate, because the pedal
pressure seemed heavy, but once we got to it, it all appears to be
stock. We're looking for something obviously wrong, but the only
thing that's wrong is something really strange:
The disk appears to have plenty of life left in it. PP surface and
flywheel surface look fine.
The spring center disk has 3 rivets that hold the 3 center plates
(that contain the 6 springs) together. The heads of those 3 rivets
have been partly worn away because they have been touching the inner
edge of the diaphram spring in this PP. Clearly these 2 parts were
never designed to play well together, even though they are both F&S.
I have a perfectly good F&S diaphram style (non-3-arm) PP that has
plenty of clearance over those rivets, and I'll be happy to install
it in her car, but this doesn't seem like it would have anything to
do with the heavy pedal pressure.
So here's my question: Has anyone seen this before? Does anyone think
this should cause heavy pedal pressure? If so, why?
While we're at this point, I think we should also pull the flywheel
and check the main seal and the gland nut pilot bearing.
So far we've replaced the missing thermostat, and the pushrod tube
next to it, that the previous mechanic had dented when he removed the
old thermostat. That pushrod had rubbed a hole in the pushrod tube.
That explains a lot of Marigold's oil loss. The rest of the
thermostat linkage was there, but it had a wrong spring installed. At
least that spring kept the flaps OPEN!
New pushrod tube, thermostat, linkage, and spring are all installed
and adjusted now.
We also found that the outboard spring anchors for the mech adv in
the distributor had been bent over by the installation of a condensor
mounting screw that was too long. I think that made the advance start
at a much lower rpm, so that the timing was dependent on what rpm you
timed it at. So Marigold gets a "new" distributor. That should make
the timing much more stable.
Comments on the clutch, PLEASE?
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Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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