Kirkham Motorsports Assembly Manual

[David Kirkham]

Here is the McLeod pressure plate we use.

[David Kirkham]

Then you will want to line every thing up on the input shaft and put it into the pilot bearing with the clutch plate on THE RIGHT WAY!!! The side marked "FLYWHEEL SIDE" of course, goes against the flywheel.




Here Sandwich is lining things up.

[David Kirkham]

Torque the pressure plate bolts to 22 ft/pounds

This is the McLeod starter that we use. It is part number 810160.

Then you will need to do something that VERY FEW people ever check. You NEED to check the gear engagement on the starter. The starter needs to have full engagement on the flywheel. If you don't get full engagement, you will chew up the edge of the flywheel ring gear and VERY SOON you will get the pleasure of taking out the interior, seats, drive line, drive shaft, clutch, pressure plate, throw out bearing assembly, transmission and FINALLY, the flywheel so you can replace the ring gear. The only thing more painful would be a trip to one of Saddam's little rooms where he "talked" to people to get info out of them, (or maybe getting hit by that drive shaft).

Here Master Sandwich is checking the engagement on the starter. Turned out it STUNK so we had to take the billet face off of the starter and take 0.080 off of the face to get it to engage properly.





You need to pull out the starter gear and make sure it has full engagement! Otherwise, you will chew the teeth off of the ring gear and destroy the starter gear. Here you can see Sandwich has trimmed the face of the starter to move it 0.080 inches in with good engagement.

[David Kirkham]

Now we bolt on the bell housing. BUT FIRST!!! We need to drill a hole in the bell housing to accept our new, cool, throw out bearing. NO MORE LEAKY hydraulic throw out bearings!

You will need to drill out the TOP hole where the clutch fork pivot normally mounted on the bell housing. We are going to use a rod end bearing there instead. I did my best interpretation of an Anasazi to draw an arrow on the bell housing to show you which hole to drill.




Then we put in the throw out bearing assembly. (Don't bolt on the transmission before the throw out bearing is in place or you will have to unbolt the tranny again!)

[David Kirkham]

This is a complete BOLT ON unit. NO WELDING!

[David Kirkham]

Notice we provided you with two holes in the throw out arm. The inner hole is for racing--hard, fast clutch. The outer hole is for me--softer, longer throw clutch as I use extremely little clutch anyway when I am racing.

[David Kirkham]

Take a sneak peek inside the bell housing and you can see the rod end we use as a pivot. It makes for a very smooth clutch action.