[James OLC]

I am going to be the first to admit that clutches (et al) are not my strong suit to begin with and the T56 and hydraulic TOB in the '67 is the first one that I have ever done (besides servicing in my old WS6).

That said, as a lot of you know I was having issues downshifting the car car at the Optima challenge - the car would upsift fine but when I tried to do higher speed/rpm downshifts the transmission wouldn't slip into gear. Heck, it wouldn't be forced into gear either... some times it would go with a little more aggressive blip but not always.

Opinions at the time ranged from transmission (doubtful - new by Rockland), to fluid (it was full), to clutch/TOB engaugement (possible), and hardware issues (but after inspection nothing is loose, backed out or missing).

So, out comes the transmission. At first look everything appears to be ok - nothing is loose or appears unusual. So, following some instructions I found on the RAM site I take some measurements to see if maybe the TOB needs a shim (which was one of the more common suggestions up front).

I measured the distance from the clutch fingers to the bellhousing mounting surface - 2.25".

I measured the distance from the compressed TOB bearing surface to the plane of the transmission mounting surface - 2.4"

It would seem to be (and as admitted, I am a far cry from an expert here) that the TOB isn't compressing enough and that based on these measurements there is pressure on the clutch fingers all the time.

so...

Does anyone have any suggestions, ideas, or recommendations on what these measurement mean and what remedy there may be?

My first thought was maybe bad TOB?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
James