I recently purchased a 1987 iroc camaro that had no engine or transmission (along with many other things) I have finally got the car restored and I am putting the drive train in 1984 305/ 5.0 with a 1987 borg warner t5 I have all new flywheel, pressure plate, release bearing, and fork. I used the master cylinder and slave cylinder that came with the car. I bled it all (no doubts on bleeding being right) but when the pedal is pushed it is not releasing the pressure plate enough.. it will shift hard into first but grind if you try for reverse. Could the slave cylinder be wrong? Thicker release bearing if that exhists? Longer fork stud? Or try and shim the flywheel? I am lost on what to go at next.. thanks for the help

 

As always, start here...



There ARE different throwout bearings, but that's not likely to be the cause of your problem. I'd put near 100% odds the above pic depicts your issue. It's also not impossible that the clippy end of the spring thing on the back side of the fork, that clips it to the ball stud, is not on the stud right. That will produce an almost identical effect. Which is, where the first half or so of pedal travel, gets consumed by the extra spring wrongly installed in the linkage, such that before ANY actual clutch pressure occurs, ALL of the springiness has to be eliminated first, like you can see in the "wrong" pic, where the fork has to move about ¼" before it even TOUCHES the business surface of the throwout.

Same for the hydraulics: they're ALMOST NEVER the cause of ANY problems with the clutch. 99.999% of the BS you see on this forum about "too short" this and whatever all else, is JUST THAT, BS. If the clutch works right, then aside from outright failure or lack of fluid, the hydraulics will too. Leave them alone until all other possible faults have been checked and eliminated.

 

That is good information but the fork was correctly installed. I should add that the clutch parts came from rock auto so don't know how trustworthy they are but I can't see that being the problem. Can I buy a longer fork stud and not run into any problems? Thanks

 

Nope.

Not sure what stone I left unturned about that sort of thing.

It's an assembly problem. Check your work.

 

take a look at the stud on the clutch pedal for wear that the master cylinder rod connects to

 

are you sure it is the correct fork?
the V6 and V8 forks look almost identical but are slightly different
had this on a customers firebird converted from V6 to V8 we replaced the clutch on, they had used the old V6 fork etc and had same problem (lucky GM workshop manual warns you about this on troubleshooting section

 

I followed up on that and matched the fork with one my dad has that came out of an 82 5speed v8 and the forks are the same. I am recieving the adjustable ball stud tomorrow and i will follow up with if it solves my problem or not. Thanks for the idea

 

The 82-83 fork and the 84-92 fork are quite different, in the location of the ballstud pocket and spring clip length. So I question your follow-up with regard to an 87 fork matching one "out of an 82 5 speed V8" since the 5 speed didn't start until 83.

The adjustable ballstud you ordered may have the wrong thread to work in the 84-92 bellhousing. They changed that from an oddball SAE thread in 1983 to an oddball metric thread for 1984.

Yes, a flywheel shim is a possible fix, but it should only be relevant to a used flywheel that's been machined.

Yes, there are looks-right wrong-bore slave cylinders. What's the bore on yours?

Look at it this way: It worked when new and doesn't work now. That means something changed that has different working dimensions than original parts. Slow down and measure things before firing the parts artillery.

What parts / numbers did you use? What pilot bushing / bearing? Did you mock up the fork and make sure when installed on the ballstud that the two tines are centered to the throwout bearing?

 

Actually there are more forks than that: the one for the 82-83 4-speeds is different from the one for the 83 T-5 w mech linkage, and the one for 84-up hyd is different again.

There's no such thing as a 82 5-speed car, so whatever you've got that "matches" whatever, there's NO TELLING what it actually is or more specifically whether it's the right one for your setup.

 

out of curiosity, did the trans slide together into the bellhousing smoothly or did you pull it together the last bit with the 4 bolts? if you pulled it together the input shaft can bind into the pilot bearing and cause this problem as well.

 

Sorry for the confusion my dad took a five speed out of an 85 and put it in his 82 camaro i should have just said 85 camaro.. so from 85 to 87 the forks are the same so that is out of question. And yes the threads are different in the bellhousing but i have a few of them so i will just tap the thread and put the base of the stud in from the inside so it sits on the collar and has no stress on threads. As for the pilot bearing answer. Yes i did use the bolts to pull it in which makes me now really think that is the problem but it is a brand new pilot bearing and i didnt ruin it putting it in but that might just be the problem.

 

And it shifted into first but wouldnt shift into reverse. If it was the pilot bearing it wouldnt have even went into first correct? I just started this thread to see if anyone else had the problem

 

Installed the adjustable stud and made it a quarter inch longer. Installed trans and works perfect. Clutch engages and disengages right in the middle of the pedal travel. Just incase anyone was wondering the stud solved my problems. This leads me to believe that rock autos clutch kit was not exactly stock because if it was i shouldnt have had to do that. Thanks for the input guys

 

Yeah I had to do basically the same thing but mine is an aftermarket trans. But even when it was stock T5 I had the same issue. I suspect there are some "replacement" parts that may differ slightly from stock. Smaller master or larger slave ID that changes the ratio. I also found it helpful to make sure I had full stroke with the clutch pedal. If I remember correct there was an up-stop I modified and made sure there wasn't too much extra padding under the carpet. Also, the bushing at the pedal to master rod can be worn which can cause some loss of movement. Mine took tweeking all the way around and an adjustable pivot. Different brand clutches I've used seem to have different "installed height" of the diaphragm spring and seem to need more travel to fully disengage.