Thread: Clutch/Pressure Plate Issue

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Sorry for the long post but I'll keep it as short as possible. Some of you may have had this problem with a clutch and might could help. My dad has a 59 Corvette that he put a Borg Warner T5 in. It came out of an 86 Iroc Camaro so it has the 17 degree rotated bell housing. I won't get into what's involved in putting one in a C1 Vette. Anyway, he used a Borg Warner OEM replacement clutch kit which the pressure plate is the exact same one as the original. The problem is with the pedal stiffness. The original Camaro setup was hydraulic but he modified part of the old and made some new linkage. He had to lengthen the clutch fork arm for more leverage. The pedal was so stiff you could barely push the pedal. He was told it was a problem with linkage geometry so he made some more changes that softened the pedal enough you could push it without breaking a leg. Well the next issue is the quickness that the clutch engages. When you let out on the pedal it's all at once, not gradual like it should be which means you just can't drive it. So he decided to switch to a hydraulic setup and used an 84-86 C4 Vette master and slave cylinder, made a new bracket to bolt the slave cylinder to the bell housing and transmission to put it where it would have originally been. This takes away any issue with linkage geometry. Well now it's worse. You can barely push the pedal it's so stiff and letting out isn't any better. Now he's back to thinking it's the pressure plate but it's too much trouble too expensive to tear all this out to try another plate if he doesn't know a good one to try. He did in the beginning try the old original but it was stiff too. Has anybody else run into something similar?

I'm not a corvette guy so I might be barkin at the wrong tree, but I cant help wondering about the ratio of the pedal itself? If the pedal is short on ratio it will make it heavy and also make it snappy. Maybe see what the difference in pedal ratio is between the '59 and the later ...?



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What is the ratio of the master cylinder piston area to the slave cylinder area?

Bob