Technical pressure plate issue

I have a '51 303 olds mated to a '51 Ford F1 3-speed using a vintage adapter plate. When the trans. is out of the car the equalizer shaft pivots (swings) freely against the throw-out bearing and moves it forward. Installed, I can not budge the TO bearing with the pedal. Removed from the car I can see that, with the pressure plate bolted and compressed on to the flywheel, one of the three release fingers is noticably higher (farther out) than the other two. Could that be the problem? Everything else looks ok

 

Those fingers should be all the same, you have a problem with the pressure plate.

 

I think the fingers should be individually adjustable. At least on two PPs I have, they are.

 

The older Long style pressure plates had an adjustment bolt on each finger. Newer ones I've seen don't have that feature so don't know if you can adjust those...

 

Those “adjustment” bolts were staked at the factory at least the ones I’m familiar with were. Early V8 Ford manuals did have instructions for adjusting them, but was that a Ford thing to have the bolts not staked?
The only way to adjust finger height is to dis***emble the pp and if a finger is too high the fulcrum holding a high lever needs to be shimmed, or if too low the fulcrum is milled where it bolts to the cover.
With your pp having a finger “noticeably higher” I suspect you have a deeper problem.

 

I believe your pressure plate is defective . I have run into this problem in the past. My suggestion is to replace it. Inspect the fork on the release lever, too. Make sure it fits the collar on the bearing properly and isn't getting ****ed to one side when under pressure. Sounds silly but it has happened, are you sure the clutch disc is facing the right way?

 

Thanks all for input. When removed from flywheel the fingers on the PP are all at the same level. When bolted down onto the the flywheel, one extends higher, and there are signs of some wear.

 

You don't say if this is a new or rebuilt pressure plate. With the pressure plate out of the car, have you laid a straight edge across the bolt hole surfaces and measured the gap between the face of the pressure plate and straight edge. Do that in several places. I'll bet you get a different reading where the high finger is to the other two. I'm only ***uming that this is a rebuilt pressure plate and if so, someone put mis-matched springs in or there are broken springs. In one of my past lives, I worked in a clutch rebuild shop and one of my jobs was dis***embling pressure plates and testing used spring heights and tension. Each spring would be marked with different colors according to the test results, then the springs would be tossed into bins and reused when rebuilding pressure plates. On a Long style pressure plate, each set of springs between the fingers may have a mix of springs but each set should always have the same mix.

 

The pressure plate was presnted as a "NOS" unit. I've ordered another one from a different supplier.