so first off i want to say i have no interior in my car except a seat, no carpet, no panels, no pas seat no console. with that said, i did a 5 speed swap in my 83. it runs fine and shifts fine but when im cruising at speed i can hear what sounds like the throwout bearing make noise, the reason i believe its the throwout bearing is cause when i press the clutch in the noise goes away. now it was a brand new clutch kit from autozone. could it be a bad bearing? why woudl the noise go away when i press the clutch in? the noise is hard to explain kinda sounds like a bad wheel bearing with no grease in it

 

I had this happen to me when I bought a clutch kit. Every thing came together all bran new. The throw out bearing was very noisy, probably china junk. I wish I had better news for you.

 

It could be a bad bearing, but from what you describe its not the throwout bearing that is the problem. When the clutch pedal is depressed the clutch fork pushes the throwout bearing into the spring fingers on the pressure plate which lets the clutch disc move away from the flywheel. The crankshaft, flywheel, and pressure plate still want to spin of course and so the throwout bearing lets this happen. The only time that the throwout bearing spins is when the clutch pedal is depressed. Since you say that you hear the noise while the clutch pedal is released that rules out the throwout bearing as the problem.

 

On a mechanical linkage 83 and older, you can adjust the air gap between the pressure plate diaphragm fingers and the throwout bearing face. If it's lightly contacting the pp fingers and rattling or otherwise creating noise, this will be your fix. I don't know the official spec. for an 83 so don't quote me, but .050" comes to mind.