The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop flywheel question

1949 3600. swaping 216 to a 235. pressuere plate and flywheel from 216 are the nine bolt HD clutch. Can i use that flywheel and put on a six bolt regular clutch kit? The nine bolt pressure plate is next to impossible to find and super expensive. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

I almost positive that the 6 bolt pressure plate will NOT bolt on unless you have a shop drill holes for it. I know it would be beyond my ability to get it drilled correctly. I know that my flywheel only had the 6 bolts for the standard clutch. The only way it might work without drilling holes is if by chance someone has already drilled the flywheel you have.

A standard 6 bolt flywheel shouldn't be that hard to come by.

If you're willing to horsetrade, we might work up a swap. Drop me a PM.
Jerry

Justice, when you say super expensive, what do you consider super expensive?

350 for pressure plate and 300 for the disc

Where are you trying to buy them?
Check here

No auto part store is going to carry. It is a nine bolt pressure plate and HD clutch. Ive tried them all. Chevy of the 40s and Jim Carter only ones ive found

Justice That is a rip -off!! Most guys on this sight have a pile of clutches/pressure plates,my pile might fit in 2 wheelbarrows.

klhansen Drilling that flywheel is not rocket science,a careful guy with a drill press and a pair of dividers could do it. Would be important to get the counter bores deep enough to accept the pressure plate bolts.

Try hr clutch in Bensalem, pa. They are excellent and have rebuilt a couple of units for me over the years. They were not that expensive and they can rebuild anything.

http://hrclutch.com/

Have you called your local NAPA store? Even though that listing I linked said to call for availability, it should be available by mail order and reasonably priced. It is a 10 inch diameter heavy duty clutch with the 9 bolt holes. Mike's suggestion about rebuilding would work also.

PM sent

heres another questoin for you. I have the 12V flysheel, starter and generator for the 235. Would i be better off just running those and rewiring the truck to 12V?

Lots of work for not much benefit. Why not just swap to a 6 bolt flywheel and clutch?
Jerry

Way back when Classic Parts was still called Chevy Duty, circa 2005, if you had a 10 3/4” you had to send them your pressure plate and disc and they would rebuild them, or shop it out. I did that for my 50 3600 with 216 and SM-420. It took about a month to get it back. Great workmanship.
Any competent machine shop can drill and tap your flywheel for a different PP.

Just a few thousandths of runout in the bolt circle of that drilled and tapped flywheel will set up a harmonic vibration at certain RPM's that will rattle the fillings out of your teeth. That pressure plate weighs several pounds. If you choose to do that, find a REALLY good machinist!

I bought a HD clutch plate from Chev's of the 40s about 5 years ago. It was a reman and I gave them the core I had. It wasn't too expensive. A little over a hundred bucks as I recall.

I had been running a 10-1/2 inch disc for several years before that but it was for a V8 and had a different number of or stiffer torsion springs than the six cylinder one so it always chattered on take up. It was all I could get at the time. I had an oil-soaked, 10-3/4 six-cylinder disc sitting around and had it relined locally. So now I have the right disc and PP. Works fine now.

I'm also running the six-volt, 9-bolt flywheel and matching starter. I've long-since converted to 12V and it has started fine for maybe 20 years since I had the strter rebuilt. At the time, I asked the rebuilder if they could convert it to 12V and the answer was "Why would you do that, they work fine just like they are." They've done a lot of other good work for me so I believed him. He was right.