Hydraulic Clutch in a 66 Barracuda

Here's a good article detailing a scattershield bellhousing installation.

The bellhousing showed up last night. Damn that's a heavy box! Haven't opened it up yet, waiting 'til I get it over to my garage, or maybe I'll take it straight to the sandblasting place....

I received the master and braided hose kit a couple of days ago, still waiting on the new bellhousing.

A recent post on moparts.com discussed high-speed vibration issues and one guy fixed his problem by replacing the tail shaft bushing. Heck, while I'm at it...

Also, I was cleaning the garage yesterday and finally found the brand new Hurst shifter linkage rods I had stashed (lost). These are the correct shifter linkage rods for the OverDrive transmission, including the shifter levers, which are quite different than non-OD pieces, it turns out, and all new busihings and clips. I'll post a pic later.

I'm starting to think about painting the trans and bellhousing, and I can't decide whether to go with my stealth Chrysler Blue theme, as I did with the 340, or go Hemi orange. Probably do the blue thing again.

I posted to Moparts.com to see which bearing retainer and bearing I'll need (y'know, the ole while I'm at it syndrome).

Couple of different answers but interesting:

ultrajosh: I just purchased a used Lakewood blowproof bellhousing w/ the 4.807" diameter hole. I have an 833 OverDrive transmission that has the large 5.125" bearing retainer, so I want to swap to the smaller size to fit this bellhousing.

Which bolt circle does my trans have, 3.70" or 4.16"? I'm guessing it's the larger circle, but I wanted to check with the experts before I buy the new retainer. I'm not ready to pull the trans apart yet to measure it.

Also, is there a way to tell from the outside what size input bearing I will need (I guess these used both sizes over the years)?

gearbanger: From my experiance, here's the scoop. The Lakewood bellhousings are drilled for the
4.807 retainer as you've already determined. Problem is, this retainer was used exclusively
on the coarse pitch HD four speeds and the tranny input shaft was larger in diameter,
therefore you need the coresponding 18 spline clutch disc and bigger throw-out bearing.
The OD tranny has the 308 bearing in front, because they couldn't be assembled without it.
You have two possible solutions with the parts you've got.
A...have the bellhousing hole enlarged to accomodate the jumbo 5.125" retainer on the
OD tranny.( this may make it necessary to move the clutch fork pivot point drilled inside
the bellhousing)....or...

B...get the big OD retainer turned down to fit the bellhousing. I'm not positive, but I believe
there is enough material on the edge to make this possible.
The 4.807 retainer and the overdrive retainer you have, both share the big 308 bearing
and always have.
None of the smaller retainers will bolt to an OD tranny.

62maxwgn: There is enough material on the retainer to have it turned without getting into the bolt holes.Have done quite a few.Easier than opening the bell housing.

JohnRR: josh , you need the bearing retainer from a 70 up B/E 383 trans , this trans used the 308 bearing and the 23 spline input shaft

the MP part number is P4529696 , hopefully its not on a never ending backorder . if it is call liberty , they may have a billet piece , its be spendy , but better than the factory cast part .

and yes , it will be a 308 bearing , before MP put it on never ending back order it was the cheapest and best available , came with almost a full trans gasket set .

ultrajosh: Thanks guys! Looks like they have the retainer I need at Mancini:

http://store.yahoo.com/chucker54/bearret.html

I read here, though, that the OD trans used both both the 3.14" (#307) and 3.54" (#308) bearing at different times:

http://www.geocities.com/motorcity/shop/3978/tranny.html

Maybe I'll just have to wait til I open it up to see which bearing I have. I bet it will turn out to be the larger bearing since the tranny has the later-style side cover and forks.

I decided while I have the transmission out to put in a Lakewood blowproof bellhousing for safety.





I found this one on eBay for $160 complete with block plate, shift fork, and pivot ball (would cost over $350 new for all these parts), but it has the smaller 4.8" input hole (my trans has the 5" bearing retainer). So I will need to swap to a smaller input bearing retainer available here. I just need to figure out the bolt circle on my trans.

I'll take the bellhousing somewhere to get blasted and I'll repaint it while I'm painting the tranny.

Useful 4-speed tranny info for future reference

I found this good parts sitethat has decent prices and a big catalog.

I ordered a 3/4" CNC master:



...and a Longacre braided hose kit:



...for $75 total (plus shipping).

I also just received the Wilwood pull-type slave cylinder I got off ebay and it looks good.

Total cost so far?

$ 30 Wilwood slave (incl shipping)
$ 75 CNC master and hyd lines
--------
$105

Not sure if I already posted this, but this guy ran into a few issues that I will probably encounter.

This site has good prices on the hydraulic line and the master.

Now I need to figure out if I have enough room on the firewall to get the clutch master in there, lined up with the stock pedal. Probably need to fabricatea linkage to the master's push-rod.

I got 2 used Wilwood 1.25" stroke 7/8" pull-type slave cylinders off eBay for around $25 each (one is a backup):



Now I'm shopping for a master - probably go with a new Wilwood unit. Need to measure firewall.

Hydraulic line kit with fittings for $23 + shipping.

So far I'm most impressed with the simplicity of the design used by the guy with a brain. The bracket looks easy to fabricate, and all the parts come in under $150. The pull-type slave seems easier to adjust and set up, and only needs two attaching points, and alignment doesn't seem to be as much of an issue as the push-type.

Here's a link I was looking for, guy used a push-type slave.

A guy with a brain has a really good page on how he figured all this out.

Or do something really slick and pro-looking with this. It includes the pedal set with master cylinders and a slave cylinder. Just replace the whole pedal set! Only tricky part is the slave bracket fab...

Here's everything for under $150

3/4" master
7/8" slave

This is the ratio the guy who did the old Dodge truck suggests.

Buy the parts new?

That way I just need to figure out what cylinder diameters to use and off I go. Well, after fabbing a bracket for the slave.

Worth $230?

This guy does his own with lots of detail on how he did it and what parts he used.

Pics here

These guys might have something for me...

use the hydraulic clutch setup out of a Japanese minitruck

This dude fabbed his own setup from junkyard parts, yeah!

Guy makes a kit for Jeeps

These guys make a kit for classic Fords - might be able to make it work with mine. Maiin issue is finding or fabbing a bracket to hold the slave cylinder in place. In what is hopefully the right place, that is. I wonder if I can mock this all up outside of the car....

Autocross Barracuda 340 w/ hydraulic clutch - sent e-mail to him asking for more details... Here's what he wrote:

Hi Josh,

I updated the web page to show the part #s I used on the conversion. The
master cylinder is part # 834 and the hydraulic throw out bearing is
#82870, here's a link the the t/o page:
http://howeracing.com/drive/drive12/indexstock.htm

You can see from the picture on the Howe page that it completely replaces
the original throw out bearing. Along with those two parts, you'll also
need to get a few feet of braided steel line, and a pedal set up. You could
get a racing style single pedal, but I had a spare set of automatic pedals
lying around, so I cut those up and made them work as the clutch pedal. Why
not use the original clutch pedal? Good question, IIRC, the master cylinder
wouldn't fit where the original pedal would have placed it. So I had to
come up with some other pedal arrangement. But, if you're doing this on an
earlier a-body, you may find it works out with the existing pedal.

I hope the instructions on my web page are sufficient to mount the
hydraulic t/o bearing on the transmission. It's pretty basic when you see
how it's going to sit on the tranny input shaft. I found I used all of the
shims included in the kit, plus I had to use a short section of pipe to get
the t/o bearing to sit up close to the clutch fingers. Measure the distance
from the transmission input bearing to the clutch fingers, and use that as
a guideline of how far forward the bearing needs to sit on the shaft. Since
the bearing is sitting so far out on the shaft, you might notice at this
point that the alignment bolt included in the kit is now too short to keep
the bearing from rotating. Or maybe not, I didn't notice it! 8^) This is
why you'll need to extend the alignment bolt to keep the bearing from
spinning. Does this make sense? If not, don't worry, I'm sure it'll be
clear when you see it for yourself.

This is a really cool conversion, I really don't know why it isn't more
common. It gets rid of the clutch rod, z-bar, clutch fork, and the over
ride spring in the pedal assembly. This leaves a LOT of room for
headers/exhaust to be installed, and since I first installed it about 6+
years ago, it's been completely maintenance free!

In the future I plan on getting the Spitfire headers, and because of the
hydraulic bearing setup, I can use the better automatic trans. style
headers rather than the more restrictive manual version. A small
improvement in performance, granted, but enough for me.

Anyway, if you have any further questions, feel free to ask.

Patrick

ps. Sorry, I don't have any pics, but if you can wait a few weeks, I can
probably get some for you.

****

Hi Patrick,

Thanks for the in-depth response! I'm starting to lean towards a slave-cylinder setup, mostly because I just got some parts cheap. If that doesn't work out I'll go for the hyd release bearing method.

I'm going to use a pull-type slave that will hang off a bracket I'll attach to the tranny side cover bolts. It loks like it should be straightforward - but nothing ever is.

I agree that it's surprising more people don't do this conversion, especially on auto-to-manual swaps. And that there doesn't seem to be any 833-specific parts out there (that I can find). I have a 4-speed pedal setup but I haven't scrutinized it yet to see if I'll be able to use the stock pedal. if not I might go for one of these kind of setups: http://www.off-roadproducts.com/series_134.html

I'll add this to my list of "kits I plan to make someday so I can retire". Plus I'll post pics on my site: http://www.ultrajosh.com when I do the conversion.

Cheers,

Josh

Howe parts

'79 Triumph project

Lot's good info on Chrysler transmissions

An old Dodge truck uses parts from a Toyota 4-Runner - good info on cylinder diameters to use

A jeep conversion

McCleod's hydraulic throwout bearing

So, I've decided to put a hydraulic clutch in the Barracuda. The main reason is that I've never really gotten the clutch linkage working right since the conversion to 4-speed. This is likely because I had to customize the z-bar since these cars came with a smaller bell-housing than the one I used. So the angles are probably a bit wrong, even though I got everything to line up. The required pressure to disengage the clutch seems way over the top, and there seems to be way more travel than there should be.

Besides, I have to pull the trans anyway to fix the leaks, and hopefully track down this vibration at highway speeds (input shaft?). Plus, there's that stripped bolt hole in the bellhousing which i need to put a helicoil into... not to mention that i cooked my throwout bearing by adjusting my linkage wrong (I think).