Last week I asked about possible causes of a clutch failing to disengage. A
lot of people responded and we tried every recommendation, but still to no
avail. We even tried pulling the car down the street thinking the gearbox
input shaft was binding in the new bushing we had installed in the rear of
the crankshaft.
We ended up pulling the engine and transmission out again last night. At
that point we were hoping we'd put the clutch disk in backwards, we just
wanted a definite cause. We had a problem separating the transmission from
the engine, but with a couple large screwdrivers, we finally managed. When
we removed the clutch we could see it was burned about 1/4 inch around the
inner edge of the friction material. Further investigation revealed the
splines on the transmission were dirty and corroded, preventing the clutch
disk from sliding on the shaft. During the process of rebuilding the
engines, the original transmission was replaced with an overdrive
transmission. Evidently this transmission has not been in a car in a long
time. The owner had rebuilt the overdrive unit and generally cleaned the
transmission, but didn't pay particular attention to the splines. During
reassembly I didn't look at the splines closely either. Glancing at the
splines didn't reveal their actual condition. Last night we cleaned the
splines and the clutch disk now slides smoothly.
If your changing your clutch, take the time to slide the new disk onto the
input shaft to be sure it slides smoothly. The old clutch disk would slide
onto the splines tightly, but the new one was very tight and bound up
easily.
Turns out this is an expensive lesson because as we were removing the
engine, we broke the solenoid mounted on the starter. Moss has a
replacement solenoid, but is it worth putting that much money into an old
(we think original to this 68 MGBGT) starter?
Thanks for all the inputs and recommendations last week.
Ken
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