Large T/O Bearing - Stiff Clutch?

[blykins]

Guys....I have a 10.5" Hays Borg & Beck Street/Strip clutch (2800 lbs) and a 10.5" Street/Strip clutch disc. I'm using a 7/8" Wilwood slave cylinder and a 7/8" Wilwood clutch master cylinder. Also using a Wilwood clutch pedal.

First question...how stiff should this thing be? I bet it's around 70 lbs to push this thing in. It's stiff enough to worry me. I'm only 26....and I wasn't really around in the good ole muscle car days where you had to use both feet to push the clutch in...so I don't know what to expect. But I'm worried that something is wrong.

It fully disengages when I push it in...everything works....and everything is new.

However, this is what bothers me. I ordered the clutch fork/ Lakewood pivot/ T/O bearing from David Kee. He sells nothing but long style pressure plates for Fords...my Hays is a Borg & Beck style. They're both 3 fingered pressure plates...but I think long style plates have shorter fingers right?

What it boils down to is that I'm worried that my T/O bearing is too large of a bearing face diameter...which would cause it to the hit the fingers on the pressure plate in the wrong spot...not giving me enough leverage and therefore a stiff pedal. Does this make sense or am I being anal?

I have a McLeod T/O bearing, part # 16031. It says the bearing face diameter is 2.8".

When I look at Hays' PDF file, the T/O bearing they recommend for their 10.5" Borg & Beck P/P has a bearing face diameter of 2.6". That's .200" difference between them....basically .100" on each side.

Or am I thinking about this all wrong...a larger bearing face would be a large contact area....which doesn't necessarily mean it contacts at the wrong spot....it just contacts across a bigger area...right?

When I test fit everything together, the T/O bearing and P/P seemed to be a great match...

Do I have a valid worry, or am I just inexperienced in the area of high-performance clutches/pressure plates?