About 7 months ago I had a t56 swapped into my car. Paid a mechanic to do it instead of doing it myself due to lack of a place to work on the car for long enough and no where to easily get the transmission in and out of the car. So I'm not fully familiar with everything and the state that everything was in. I put a brand new flywheel and clutch in when I did the conversion. (Had a T5 in it before). I did use the T5 master and slave cylinders with a longer hydraulic line (read some guides that said this was ok to do, still not sure if it was or not, it may be the cause of my problems, may not be).

Anyway, immediately after getting the car back when depressing the clutch far enough the transmission made a noise where two things where hitting that should not be. The guy that did the work said the clutch fork was worn out and needed to be replaced. From what he told me is that the clutch fork has two little raised spots on the end that keep it from going all the way down into the other rotating parts and the raised spots were worn down letting it go down and hit a little. Now the mechanic I had do the work has done a lot of other work for me on multiple cars and has never let me down before, and he claimed that he fed a camera up in there and watched what was happening to confirm that was the problem, so I believed him at the time.

Well the problem has gotten progressively worse and I have been unable to find a clutch fork for this thing anywhere. Have checked all over, the t56 is out of a 97 trans am btw. Parts stores can't get it, summit doesn't have, rock auto doesn't have it, none of the other part shops and warehouses I've tried have it. I don't understand why a part on for a 97 would be this hard to find, but it is.

Anyway, moving on to today. I was working on one of my other cars and took my camaro to head to the parts store and got down on it a little hard, and whatever was "worn out" broke completely. Can't even touch the clutch pedal a little without it making noise and hitting. I limped home using RPM shifting but now I've got to figure out how to take care of the problem.

If this sounds like it could actually be the clutch fork, does anyone know where the heck I can find one? If it sounds like it might be something else, what do you think it might be?

Thanks!

 

http://www.thegearbox.org/T56.html

They have clutch forks

 

It's possible, but the fork comes with pre-ground tine faces so it will look "worn" when brand new. And the throwout bearing is prevented from continuously spinning and wearing down the fork; you didn't wear it down in a year. His information is valid for a lot of clutches out there, but it is a 1% of the time if you're lucky occurrence in the case of the Valeo pull clutch.

I'd wager it has to do with clutch geometry. New, the 97 worked fine, so what changed?

If you add a thicker-than stock flywheel, it moves everything towards the trans. and give the fork less range of motion to release the clutch (before it grinds the outside back of the pressure plate.) Also, a too-thick clutch disc can cause a need for extra travel to release the clutch, again letting the fork have more opportunity to overtravel and grind the PP. And of course, an out-of-range of design pressure plate can be a problem.

Fixing the geometry when there are variations on many aftermarket clutch assemblies is tough. In short, the band-aid would be to alter the height of the fork.

For older (83 and older F-bodies,) Lakewood has offered an adjustable fork ballstud for decades. The equivalent piece in your case is a fulcrum tee. If milled down some, it could have potentially fixed your problem.

BTW, you probably broke the throwout bearing. And you're welcome.

 

Thanks!

Thanks for the information. The flywheel and clutch I put in where both supposedly OEM replacements. If they have variations in the thickness and such that could cause this problem, then that is pretty crappy to label them as OEM replacements.

I have no idea what a "fulcrum tree" is? Searching for it on google produces all kinds of results about trees and other things lol.

What exactly does the throwout bearing do? I want to understand what is going on here so I can make sure it gets fixed correctly this time. How would I have broken it? Are they that easy to break?

 

There is nothing wrong here other than you kept your 3rd gen hydraulics and pedal. This setup produces way more throw then the T56 needs. So you need to either get 4th gen hydraulics and 4th gen pedals, Cut the clutch master rod and make it adjustable, or finally change the location of the pivot pin on the clutch pedal to create less travel.

Again there is nothing wrong with the clutch fork, TO bearing, clutch, etc. It is simply getting over extended from the current pedal/hydraulic setup.

EDIT: Well you could have broke the TO bearing in the process as mentioned earlier.

 

I don't really care to change my pedals, I remember reading something about cutting the clutch master rod to make it adjustable, is that for the 3rd gen master, or the 4th gen master with 3rd gen pedals?

 

Think of it this way. 3rd gen pedal with 4th gen hydros makes too much movement and often requires modification to pedal or master rod. 3rd gen pedals with 3rd gen hydros is even more movement so also requires modification even more to limit movement. The master/slave bore sizes are different between 3rd and 4th gen in a way that the 3rd gen setup creates more movement on the slave end.

Here is a link to a thread I made about the clutch pedal mod option.

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tran...pedal-mod.html

 

That mod looks a lot more complicated than the other thing I saw somewhere if I can find it again that showed how to convert a master cylinder to an adjustable master cylinder. Don't remember if it's a 3rd gen master or 4th gen master though, guessing a third gen.

I guess it doesn't really matter though? If I make the master cylinder rod shorter, it's going to pull the clutch pedal down some and give less travel before it hits the stop point. I think this is what needs to be done? Make the rod shorter so that the pedal is closer to the floor initially and has less travel before being depressed all the way? I don't really like this option either because it screws with my pedal positions and I like them where they are at and am used to it, but I've got to do something to fix it lol.

Cutting the master cylinder rod and making it adjustable seems way simpler than cutting off part of the pedal and welding it back on.

 

Just a note on the pedal mod since in your case you would not have to mess with the original pin as you are using 3rd gen hydraulics. So all you would need is to do is drill it out to make the pivot and cut and grind the welds. To me that is easier than cutting the master since getting the master out is a total pain. You take out one bolt and the clutch pedal is in your hand and making it pivot will not affect the height of the pedal. And i ended up not re-welding it as I found no issues leaving it as is with just the bolt holding it.

 

I know this is an old thread but I have a T56 out of my '97 WS6, it has destroyed 2 throwout bearings (Peeled the back lip off both) and it hits the pressure plate.

I am installing this trans into my '88 Formula and want to get it working correct before I burn up a good clutch. The wear pattern on the clutch fork and pivot is weird and want to replace both (hard to describe what is looks like). I am going to be using a pre-bled 4th gen hydraulic set up and 4th gen pedals. I have also heard to shim the slave cylinder.

Thoughts?

 

4th gen hydros and 4th gen pedals should require no further modifications. Modification is only required when you use 3rd gen pedals.