Large T/O Bearing - Stiff Clutch?

[Rick Parker]

I have first hand info on this. When I put mine together originally it had a 3/4 master and a 3/4 slave. I also put in a street strip "Long style" pressure plate from McCloud. It was overkill. In my planning I thought I would need the clamping force of that pressure plate. The combination of 1:1 on the hydraulics and super strong pressure plate really made the pedal extreemly stiff (exactly your concern). I used this combination and used this clutch combo for 8 years but during my recent rebuild I addressed the problem by sending the pressure plate to McCloud after (8 yrs it looked like new after I wiped it down). They replaced 3 of the coil springs (there are 9 that provide the clamping force) with softer ones and most importantly replaced the fingers with some newly designed ones that change the leverage they operate from and therefore reduce pedal effort. I also increased the slave cylinder bore to 7/8". The result was a much reduced pedal effort that makes it much more pleasant to drive. In retrospect the street strip pressure plate is too much in my opinion for the weight of these cars regardless of the horsepower. You reach a point where traction is overcome by torque (due to light weight on rear) and the tires become the weak link not the clutch.
Suggest you play with the ratio of the master & slave first. Contact Hays regarding the T/O bearing concern. All of the diaphram clutches usually have many fingers which are actually part of the springs fingers that contact the face of the T/O. With this type of pressure plate the T/O bearings contact face are usually rounded so the fingers "roll" accross the contact face of the T/O bearing.


I would suggest you alter the bore size of your slave cylinder to a little larger and be sure you have the correct T/O bearing .


Rick