My friend is having trouble finding a clutch fork and fulcrum solution to his clutch replacement. He burned the last clutch out (B&B) because there was no means of obtaining free play with his set up. He has an aluminum bellhousing and 130 tooth flywheel. I believe the bell housing is a replacement from Brewers for 383/440. Brewers recommended a RAM diaphragm clutch (10.5) and has shipped him another set of fork/fulcrum for it. He now has quite a collection of forks, pivots and Z-bars but nothing fits. The fork bottoms out on the rubber boot at the front of the fork opening and crams the TObearing into the clutch fingers before he can even get the bell up flush to the engine block. No linkage is hooked up to the fork. And we checked the distance from the flywheel face to the transmission mounting surface of the bell housing and found it right on spec at 5.74”.
I went over and looked at it yesterday and verified the limiting factor is the fork crammed up against the front of the opening in the bell housing. The fulcrum is holding the fork walls about 1/4” off the inside back wall of the bell housing. It appears the only solution is a lower fulcrum or a fork where the outer arm curves back after the fulcrum to get it away from the front of the opening, or both. He got yet another fork and fulcrum from Brewers yesterday but the fork looks like the same straight arm fork and the fulcrum looks even higher than the one he already has mounted. He's going to try them out but they don’t look like the answer. Everything is from Brewers, clutch kit, linkage, bell housing, even the transmission is an older unit from Brewers. We can’t figure it out. His boot seems thicker and stiffer than mine and that’s what the fork is bottoming out on. I’m not sure if a replacement would help or not. He needs the fork and TO bearing to go back an estimated 3/8” or more just to get the bell housing in place with zero free play on the clutch. It looks to me that the only way is to cut a fulcrum down in height so the fork just barely clears the back of the bell housing and cut wedge sections out of the folded over walls of the fork just outboard of the fulcrum, bend the outer fork arm back and weld it up.
Anybody run into this before? I don’t know how he got as much service out of his original clutch before it slipped. It’s obvious the clutch was always depressed when running.
I went over and looked at it yesterday and verified the limiting factor is the fork crammed up against the front of the opening in the bell housing. The fulcrum is holding the fork walls about 1/4” off the inside back wall of the bell housing. It appears the only solution is a lower fulcrum or a fork where the outer arm curves back after the fulcrum to get it away from the front of the opening, or both. He got yet another fork and fulcrum from Brewers yesterday but the fork looks like the same straight arm fork and the fulcrum looks even higher than the one he already has mounted. He's going to try them out but they don’t look like the answer. Everything is from Brewers, clutch kit, linkage, bell housing, even the transmission is an older unit from Brewers. We can’t figure it out. His boot seems thicker and stiffer than mine and that’s what the fork is bottoming out on. I’m not sure if a replacement would help or not. He needs the fork and TO bearing to go back an estimated 3/8” or more just to get the bell housing in place with zero free play on the clutch. It looks to me that the only way is to cut a fulcrum down in height so the fork just barely clears the back of the bell housing and cut wedge sections out of the folded over walls of the fork just outboard of the fulcrum, bend the outer fork arm back and weld it up.
Anybody run into this before? I don’t know how he got as much service out of his original clutch before it slipped. It’s obvious the clutch was always depressed when running.
