I took the the trans off of the bell housing to remove it.  When reinstalling could I use studs in the bell housing instead of bolts?  Or is it easier to put the bell on the trans and put it in as on unit?

The motor is tilted back as it sits in the car right now.  Should I reattach the exhaust at the manifolds?  Or will this put too much stress on the exhaust studs?  Thanks in advance.

I thought at first that the rust on the fingers might have come from a bad bearing but it seems to be elsewhere too so maybe just from the environment it is in.

Your throw out bearing sitting at an angle would scrape up your diaphragm fingers. And it would be noisy, metal scraping sound.

the release bearing surface that contacts the finger is flat. it is meant to float loosely on the transmission bearing retainer nose and "self-align" when you press the pedal. the surface gets a scuff pattern, but I've not seem much wear beyond that.

if the bearing itself was bad then it might force that flat surface to rotate, and that would sure make noise and wear. if you press the bearing flat down on a table with full body weight it ought to rotate perfectly smoothly with no crunchiness. if it's not perfectly smooth, even if it's new, it's bad.

the real difficulty I find is the in-between stuff; new is obvious, rotten is obvious, in between is a judgement call.

There is more than 1 Length of Clutch Arm Pivot that was used thru the years...

There's even mention of Hurst modifying Pivot Length for the Clutch used in the S/S AMX cars.

Correct Clutch Arm Pivot Height is another variable to getting it all set up right is my point

along with Bell Housing, Clutch Fork, T/O Brg, Trans Input, Pressure Plate, & Disc...

Incorrect height Clutch Throwout Lever Pivot has been the problem more than once...

 

Picture 1 and 3 of the last post show the ends of the fork, not the fingers, being worn.

Picture 3 also shows the throw out bearing riding on the fork and not just the "fingers".

Wrong bearing is likely, clutch/fork not adjusted correctly??? Or just miss-match and wrong parts.

The fork can be salvaged, finger replaced. But you have to determine if you have the correct parts. The throw out bearing should just be contacting the fingers of the fork and nothing else for movement.

it may be that bad motor mounts and/or bad Z-bar allowed the relative positions to shift so that the clutch pedal is applying pressure to the fork at a bad angle. either now, or in the past.

Thanks.  After I made the last post, I reread the TSM while looking at the transmission.  I now understand.  Thanks again.