[T3] Clutch question

[Jim Adney]

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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