Hello everyone, I have a cluth problem I have a 69 superbee with a 440 and a 4 speed. While the car is running I push down on the clutch and right before it bottoms out it starts to make an ugly grinding noise. I thought it was the throwout bearing but I was told by a tech line that I have the following problem: the pedal travel is too great for the clutch I have and to fix it I need to:
-install a clutch pedal stop or
-get rid of the diaphram clutch and install the correct original borgan style clutch

The car can still shift so long as I don't bottom out the clutch pedal.

The maintenance manual wasn't much help...has anyone ever had this problem???

THANKS!

A couple of questions- center force clutch? Was this clutch in the Bee when you bought it, or new just installed? How far does the pedal travel to release the clutch?

Clutch fork pushrod length adjustment needed.

To get scientific, find out the proper air gap with the clutch pedal depressed and adjust the length til you get the proper feeler gauge reeding.

Less tech, shorten it a bit until it stops.

Obvously by changing the pushrod length the point at where the clutch grabs will be different. Only way to keep that the same is to fabricate a pedal stop that prevents the pedal from being pressed down as far.

Just move your seat back a little

Ralph, the clutch was already in it when I bought the bee. The owner before me told me it was a stock replacement clutch. I'm not sure how far the pedal travels to release the clutch. Are you referring to when the pedal is on it's way up? For example, I press down and I feel pressure and then I release until I don't feel pressure, how far does the clutch travel after I release?

I plan on getting under the car this saturday while my buddy is pressing on the clutch to see if I can see if there is anything binding or misaligned. Wish me luck.

Chris, I'm gonna give the scientific route a shot first and see what shakes out. I think the geometry may be off. I'm gonna read up on clutches and see if I can't get your suggestions to work. The car had a scatter shield at one point and then had some stuff swapped so I think something may have gotten mixed up in the mix causing some stuff to be misligned. The problem is that I don't know what's right and what's wrong. Thank you for the suggestions, I plan on attacking the problem this saturday...I'll let you know what I find

I'LL BE BACK!

The wrong flywheel bolts will interfere with springs in the clutch disc right before full contact.

Yeah, get under the car and measure the air gap between the disk and the flywheel while somebody floors the clutch. My guess is it is huge.

I'm also guessing your clutch is grabbing high on the pedal travel.

Ya what Chris said.

We have add a lot of luck with the diaphram clutch in James' car but they are a pain to get dialed in at first.

I got under the car today and quickly realized that there was a well made 1 inch adapter between the transmission dust cover and bell housing. The dust cover will not bolt on to the bell housing without the spacer or it will hit the flywheel. My buddy pressed on the clutch while the motor was off as I looked underneath and it didn't seem anything was binding, but I noticed that it does not make the crunch noise while the motor is off. It also looked like there were 2 clutch discs in the clutch set up...they were stacked against one another, so I don't know if that's right???

I will take it to my buddies house next saturday where we have much more room to work and measure the gap like Chris suggested...WISH ME LUCK

It's fixed. I adjusted the clutch rod with the 2 nuts a few turns and the pedal doesn't grab as high and the crunching noise is gone. I think I'm gonna tweak it a bit more but it's pretty good overall

adios amigos.