I did the conversion with the McLeod Hydraulic throw out bearing before they offered the firewall adaptor and the clutch pedal setup so I had to make up and modify these parts. If I was to do it again I would buy the complete kit from them but I only have experience with them and no other supplier. Gord
Yes indeed, they turn that stuff around! Summit gots to love us! They have a lot of my money. My MT Drag T/A's were on my door step on Tuesday morning ordered on Sunday!
It appears they know it works for a BUICK powered jeep. I am curious about the set up from pedal to slave cylinder And the application for an A body
Yeah, I emailed them (or a company selling a very similar external slave setup, can't remember now) sometime ago and they said it was meant for jeeps, it may be able to be made to work, but they weren't really sure. I wasn't feeling that adventurous at the time so I didn't pursue it.
Yep. Didn't have to shim the bell housing off the block. Actually had to add 2 of the provided spacers behind the throwout bearing to get the spec'd .150"-.200" space (mine came in at .190" with 2 spacers behind the bearing. But fair warning, nothing else is a bolt on. I'm out here fabbing brackets now. Taking pictures, I'll be back with a detailed write up when its done.
Good news, what was the measurement you came up with? That set up looks deep. Please photo document and note details....I am a,couple weeks behind you. I am curious how the pedal set up is going to work with the factory style 4 speed firewall steering column plates and the plates that come with the kit. Are you running a Stock or billet Flywheel?
The unshimmed gap was .370. I added two shims (@.090 each) to get a .190 gap (spec is .150-.200). Apt says it will work with as little as .100, but its not optimal. After doing the math and setting the shims, I crawled back underneath and did a bit of a "dummy" check. I set the depth of the fingers to the bell housing and then compared to to the bearing position. You can see the scale in the pic, right at the calculated .190. Mounting the master cylinder to the fire wall was another can of worms entirely. Word of caution: this is not a bolt on and go kit! As you can see, minor issue... So I modified a clutch pedal rod boot retainer I had my welding a plate over the hole. Tried to mount it inside, but it wasn't going to fly to outside it went. I also had the cut off the lip around the hole on the firewall to get it to sit flush. One thing I didn't get pictures of is the pedal. I had to cut off the ear the existing clutch pedal rod mounted to, and weld on another one (inverted from the original) as the provided hiem joint wouldn't fit in place as it was originally made. That's about as far as I got. All thats left now is to attach the pedal rod (its not a perfectly straight shot so the rod will have a few small bends. Not drastic, but a slight jog. To get it straight, I would have had to trim a decent amount of firewall to get the master over far enough and didn't want to do that. Couldn't extend the newly added clutch pedal bracket far enough as it would then collide with the brake pedal.), mount the reservoir, reinstall the trans and bleed the system. I gotta say, for the amount of additional work I had to do on the fly, the system is a bit pricey IMHO. All the components are very nice, but for $600 I would've liked something a bit more user friendly to install. In my situation, if the pedal feels good and everything does its job it'll be worth it. But I'm not So sure it'd be worth doing if you had a good functioning mechanical setup (which I did not).
This kit is nothing special then. I did the same thing in my thread. I listed all the part numbers and prices. Ic had 280 in mine. Seems like your kit was 300 more and you didn't gain anything. I'm not trying to come across smug, but I expected more for that kind of money.
Not smug at all, I expected it to be a bit more straightforward as well. If I had more time to burn, I would've explored piece-parting a kit a little more to save cost. Don't get me wrong, the components themselves are nice, and everything is matched up in a pretty little package for you to play nice together. But actually attaching them to the car is a different story.
Good update Shawn. I figured the 4 speed firewall column plates were going to be problematic and swaping to auto shift column plates might be in order. Also, your front end is still off the car making access pretty simple. How much would you have in the cuss jar if the front end was on?
The cuss jar cup would runnith over my friend! My fenders on on site and ready, but I decided to wait till this was all sorted out. Boy am I glad. Not saying it couldn't be done with fenders, but it would royally suck {worse}
Shawn, Sorry to see you still weren't happy with the pedal. Reading back a few posts, I didn't know you were using a Z bar form NPD. And the fact you had to tweak it should have been a red flag..... In regards to your current system, I can say I did a similar conversion on a 1987 Monte Carlo SS and used an F body slave cylinder from the parts store instead of the Wilwood piece. I see you've cut the pedal to accommodate the fabrication you've done. Just make sure the rod from the pedal travels straight into the Wilwood slave or you'll have issues with the slave failing early. I should also note, the conversion on the Monte Carlo I did took 24 hours of my time sorting it out and fabricating parts to make it all work.
Yeah Paul, after my adjustments you and I discussed, the pedal was vastly improved. But from moving the car around and playing with it, it started going away again. I found the frame bracket had bent, although it seemed plenty strong enough for how the pedal felt. At this point I was pretty much fed up, a hydraulic setup was always on my mind, and I decided enough was enough. I'm into this one for about 5 hours now with a couple more to go I think (and a pinch more for the trans reinstall). Definitely more work than I expected, but if it functions as it should I'll consider it worth it.
I Will do the conversion while I have the engine out making the swap for the 462 so it should be safe and sane :TU:
I recommend it! It'd definitely help! I got the pedal hooked up and man is it a shorter throw than I'm used to! If it works like it should, it really will be a pleasure to drive I believe. Its all ready to go except for putting the trans in, hooking up the feed line and bleeding the system. I will say it was a lot of work, but not the worst project I've done either.
I don't have the measurement off hand, but it is mounted lower than factory (by maybe 3/4 to an inch). I know that shortens it up. I did that to facilitate figment of the heim joint without interference from the brake pedal, and also it made the alignment of the connecting rod and the master cylinder bore very good. I'm guessing its maybe 6" of pedal travel but I'll get a measurement tomorrow.
i believe you will have to move your hiem joint push rod attachment closer to the pivot, ie. not lower than factory but closer to it. mcloed recommends just about 2 to 2-1/2in. from push rod attach point to pivot. any more than that and you will need to build muscle in your left leg to drive your car. I think the stock location is about 4in from pivot and sounds like you moved it further away not closer? its problematic achiving the measurment McLoed suggests with the stock pedal at least it was in my situation. i was under the dash working on this so much i took the seat out. Once you figure it out the clutch pedal should be at about the same hieght as the brake pedal. i was scared to overstroke the throwout bearing as it can push the seal out and then...well you can only imagine. gord you may want to buy my licence plate by the time you are done...
