The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Driveline Pressure Plate Alignment?

Hello All,

I am re-installing my clutch - moving "old" FW and clutch to "new" engine. However, I did not mark the pressure plate and FW for orientation before I disassembled them.

When re-installing, I could not find an "X" on the pressure plate, though the FW is marked with an "X". The pressure plate was stamped "rebuilt", so it is not the original.

I've checked other threads, and my situation, not having a clearly marked "X" on the pressure plate, seems to be typical.

My question is, does a rebuilt pressure plate require orientation to the "X" on the FW? If it does, what feature should I align with in the absence of a clear "X" on the pressure plate?

Thanks in advance for the help.

Best regards,

Bill

I have never installed a pressure plate in any particular place. I don't see where it would make a difference.

no,just line up the bolt holes and put the bolts in

I can understand why you are asking the question. You want to make sure that the pressure plate is balance with the flywheel...

If your pressure plate and flywheel were balance I would certainly hope that they were done independently from one another. It would be very rotten of someone to do them together.

I would reinstall and not give it a second thought.

A pressure plate and clutch disk are not part of the engine and as a result would be zero/neutral balanced by the manufacture. When removing a used unit and reinstalling it is marked to simply allow for wear matching.

The flywheel on the other hand can relate to the engine. If the engine is internal balanced the flywheel should be neutral balanced. If the engine is external balanced then builders will balance the flywheel to the engine.


If you are building to performance engine levels then every thing is balanced as a unit for high RPM performance.

Thanks All.

I appreciate your comments and the assurance that I'm not missing something.

Best regards,

Bill

I have a related problem. I got my 292 rebuilt and cannot get the flywheel to bolt up to the pressure plate for the life of me (the tranny and engine are currently in the truck, so it's tough to see any alignment markings). The flywheel and pressure plate haven't changed. I can get one bolt to catch but none of the adjacent ones will. Spinning the pressure plate to another hole doesn't help. Any tips or tricks that I might be missing? Of course I didn't mark the alignment when I removed the engine like I should have!

You are using a clutch disk alignment tool?
Checked for a side on disk marked flywheel side?

When you say the tranny is in the truck, do you mean it is installed? The pressure plate should be installed before you put the transmission on. When bolting up the pressure plate, start the first bolt but don't turn it to where it is applying pressure. You need to install all six before any of them are applying pressure.

Just to make sure I'm explaining everything correctly (novice mechanic here), I essentially pulled the engine and left the tranny (SM 420) in place. I don't think I bolted the ones that threaded correctly with much pressure, but maybe I put too much pressure on (?).

What I was questioning about was it seemed that you had the transmission in place but the pressure plate was not bolted down. That is the wrong order to do things. The pressure plate should be bolted up tight before installing the transmission.

If your sure all parts are correct and in correct alignment then you may have to do what I did some 20 years ago.
Get two bolts about a 1/4 in longer then the stock bolts.
put one in one hole and on opposite side the other. Turn them in just enough to get the plate lined up and started down until your stock bolts threads grip. Then put in the stock bolts and once all but the two are in remove the two longer bolts and replace with stock.

DO NOT LEAVE in longer bolts. MAKE SURE all is correctly aligned.

It took some creativity, but the flywheel is bolted up now. Thanks for the help folks!

How did you get it to work?