Clutch fork mods.

Now the engine was in I could start to look at some of the little jobs that need doing. the first of which was to check that the clutch fork would clear the chassis.

I has already removed the 2 points from the end of the fork to give greater clearance, but looking at it in situ I decided that the return spring hole had to go as well.


So out with the trusty dremel and about half an hour later the fork was modified, this is as far as I can go without the slave to move the clutch and check clearance.

Next step on the clutch is finalise the slave bracket design and get it built!

Clutch slave.

With things dried out in the garage (£93 worth of electricity later!!) I need to press on and get the clutch slave cylinder bracket sorted. This needs to be done before the engine goes into the chassis as space will be tight and its much easier to work around the engine on the floor stand.

I need to get the engine into the chassis to make way for my next side project, Ive a Ford Pop engine to rebuild for my father in law so I need the space currently occupied by my engine. I did offer him the 302 but he felt it a little over powered fro the Pop!

Of course this being my build nothing goes simply or follows the accepted norm. Whereas most would buy the Tremec gearbox option and have the joy of using the Repower slave cylinder and bracket that just bolts on, I of course chose the little used Getrag/Ford in a GD combination. A such a slave cylinder and bracket are not available off the shelf in a kit, but hey its all good fun and I'm saving money, well that's what I keep telling myself!

The clutch fork on the standard Ford setup operated the opposite way to a Tremec in that the cylinder needs to be engine side and push to the rear of the car, of course engine side is where the bell housing is and space is a little tight.

I will go back and populate with pics in the future of the various designs I wen through but here's V2 that has now been sidelined in favour of V3 which is under development.


As you can see it is mocked up in MDF and once finalised I will transfer to AutoCAD and get them cut from mild steel in 6mm thickness (thanks Simon for that advice).

having looked at the design I am now trying to work out if I can out the vertical mounting plate on the other side close to the bellhousing thus reducing the width of the assembly by about 8-10mm.

Back to the drawing board.

Clutch build up

With the bell housing dialled in and the gearbox assembled I moved onto finally assembling the clutch to the engine.

First off I modified the block plate lower starter mounting hole to account for the alignment adjustment made by the offset dowels, Oh and painted the block plate red to match the engine! You can just see here how the heat of running the engine has changed the paint colour, they are both painted from the same can!


Next I pressed the flywheel dowel pins into place (glad I got that press!) and cleaned the flywheel, paying particular attention to the clutch surface. Oh and also the flywheel bolts and holes in the crank to ensure a good seal.

After a bit of wrestling with the flywheel I got it onto its register on the crank with all the bolt holes lined up. It appears it only fits on in two locations as although the holes look evenly spaced, they are not! Given the weight of the flywheel it wasnt fun battling with it to get it lined up and on!

Now its important to use thread sealer on the flywheel bolts as the crank drillings are open to the sump, as I found out on the dyno oil will work its way past the threads. So Loctite 577 was used as I know it fuel safe so I figured it would also be oil safe!


With the flywheel on the clutch plate was installed on its locating tool and inserted into the pilot bearing.

Finally the clutch cover was cleaned again to remove a traces of grease/oil and snapped over its dowel pins on the flywheel. The bolts thread locked with loctite and installed finger tight at first then 2-3 turns at a time wound in to bring the cover tight to the clutch plate.

Final thing tonight was to mount the bell housing to the engine with he clutch fork in place. I just wanted to see how the release bearing was going to sit against the clutch cover.


Luckily it all looks OK, also with the rubber boot on the clutch fork is naturally drawing the release bearing away from the cover so I that's stopped me worrying that the boot would cause the bearing to ride the cover.

So thats it, all I need now is the moly spray to treat the input shaft and I think the gearbox assembly can be mounted to the engine!