Hi I have a chevy I6 (230) 3 speed combo.. I decided to upgrade to a t-5. The parts I used are. 1. Original aluminum 3speed bellhousing and fork. 2. Original style 3 speed throw out bearing. 3. Original small fly wheel..153 tooth I'm thinking.. An 11 inch clutch would not fit it.. 4. Speed way 14 spline 10 inch clutch for an s-10 5. The original 3 speed pressure plate for a 10 inch clutch 6. 14 spline t-5(1991) The input shaft has been ground 5/8 of an inch I believe but not the splines.. I had driven the car with the 3 speed very recently and all of the 3 speed components worked great. My issue is that the clutch will not engage. If I start it in gear with my foot on the clutch the starter pulls the car.. What did I do wrong? Thanks Chandler
Sounds like you mean to say the clutch is not disengaging. The splines on the t-5 input shaft dont go far enough back. I have a t-5 in my 37 PU behind a 153 4 banger with the same clutch setup and to fix the problem I ground about 1/4" out of the splines on the back side of the clutch plate. If the clutch disc doesn't slide far enough back on the input shaft then the input shaft will hold the disc up against the flywheel not letting it release. Also you have to cut about an inch of of the front bearing retainer. Heres a couple of pics
Make sure you didnt put your clutch disk in backwards. Happened to me once and i couldnt get it to disengage. i had sworn i put it in right, but i took the trans back out after ruling out every other possibility of why my clutch wasnt working right and behold it was in backwards..felt pretty dumb. Hah
When I put a T 5 on a flathead Ford, I mocked it up with no clutch to look up in there and measure. If the bell housing wont allow a straight look, use a mirror and a light.
did the trans go in or together easy, or did you draw it together with the bolts to the bellhousing? it should just slide together smoothly. if you used the bolts to draw it to the bellhouseing, then you are pinching the c/disc to the flywheel you need more cutting. if you didn't use the bolts, and it butted together nicely, your clutch disc is in backwards. JAN.
Test fitting every component along the way is the way to go. It seems that each T-5 that I did had different issues while going together. But nothing that can't be solved, easily. Also make sure the big hole in the bell is the right size for the T-5 front bearing retainer. Good luck, let us know what solved the problem.
That's the ticket! The T-5 into a Y using a stock bell with no adaptor you have to cut about 3/8" of the tip of the input shaft or it bottoms in the crank. Although with your problem I think the afore mentioned "spline bind" sounds like the thing to check.
I was going to suggest the same thing. Hate to admit it but your not alone. I did the same thing once and it had the same symptoms.
When I put a T-5 from an S-10 in my '38 Ford pickup with a 307 Chevy, I ran into similar issues. Discovered that diesel engine S-10's with the T-5 (rare, probably not as rare as they should be) used a 3/8" thick aluminum spacer between the trans and bellhousing, put one of those in and it solved my problems. The diesel S-10 spacer is a rare part, just dumb luck that I found one at the local scrap metal place, but you could draw a pattern from the bellhousing and make a spacer that would do the same thing from 3/8" flat steel or aluminum plate.
I too have a similar set up in my 29 model A tudor. i'm running a `66 327 with the old style belhousing and fork with old style throw out bearing, old style flywheel for 11" clutch, and a `85 T-5 out of an S-10. What I did was, first had to drill out mounting holes on the T-5 so i could bolt it to the old bell housing. shaft length and pilot diam. were perfect, I then had to machine about 1" off the snout that the throw out goes on and machined the splines longer on the shaft about 3'8" in order to get enough space for the clutch not to bind. I found too that there was 2 years of astro van with a 4.3 liter engine and a T-5 that ran an 11" clutch w/ 1" x 14 spline, so thats what I used. works great!
My T5 was about 1/4" too long. I ground some of the front splines off to fit into the pilot bearing. If I bolted it up it would have been wedged into the flywheel pilot and become one with the crank.
Here is what happened when I put my T5 in with my 283. It worked great with my 216. But the pilot bushing in the V8 was a little too tight around the input shaft, and it would do the exact same thing as you describe here. With the engine running and as I tried to put it in gear...it eased forward. After checking everything else, I pulled the trans and honed the pilot bushing out, and it worked great! My first clue should have been that the trans did not slide up and contact the bell housing just by shoving it...and as I tightened the bolts, it bound up in the pilot bushing.
when using an S10 T5 you ALWAYS need to test fit the trans and clutch disc to make sure the disc does not bind on the input splines. To fix this issue, you can lengthen the splines on the input shaft, or grind some off the backend of the clutch disc, or put a 1/8" thick spacer between the trans and bellhousing. And definitely make sure you didn't put the disc in backwards...
the 216 and 283 use the same pilot bushing. did you check to see if the bellhousing center hole was within .005" of the crankshaft centerline?
I don't recall the specific issues I had, but the problems were similar. I was trying to use a bone stock S-10 T5 where a Saginaw 3-speed used to be. It wasn't a bolt on. A lot of people said you could cut the bearing retainer shorter, and cut about 1/4" off the front of the input shaft. That did NOT work. I ended up swapping out the input shaft for one from a non world class V6 Camaro or Astro van T5. Was able to buy one brand new from some place online. Also used and Astro clutch, as it was an 11" disc. Here is the thread I made about putting the T5 in the car....might have some more specific details in it if you're interested. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=257287&page=5
space the trans out from the bell housing you can jack up the car and loosen the bolts put in washers to test only take a few minutes to do 3/16 is what it took to get mine to work
This just jogged my memory. i had the same interference between the front of the input shaft and the pilot bushing. I pulled the bushing out and cut about 1/4 inch off of it. Problem solved.
This is generally only an issue with the S10 T5 due to the length of the input shaft being slightly longer than a standard Chevy input.
Mine is out of an 1989 Camaro . It depends totally on what the transmission is bolting to. Mine is bolting to a 1952 Hemi.
Then you should have no issues IF your adapter is for a Chevy. The Camaro version of the T5 has the same input shaft as a Muncie or Saginaw or T10 (chevy version), so if your adapter is to put a Muncie behind the Hemi, a Camaro T5 will bolt in correctly. That said, you can still pick & choose poor combinations of clutch discs and with bodged together clutch linkages, can run into any number of problems, but input shaft length won't be one of them...it will be with the S10 T5 because the S10 input shaft is longer....
Are you talking about the Ford pattern ones, or are there a third set of oddballs...nothing about T5s surprise me!
I had the same problem when I put a T5 from a S-10 behind the 235 in my 41 Chevy. After pulling the trans a couple times I finally decided to measure from the pilot bearing surface to the trans mating surface of the bell housing. I then checked the dimension from the face of the trans to front end of the splines and found that dimension to be just under 1/8" longer that the bell housing to pilot bearing dimension. I used two pieces of 1/8" steel as shims on each side of the trans face to space the trans toward the rear. Problem solved. Drove it all last year with no issues. Do some measuring of the same areas on your car and I bet you'll find the cause of the binding.
Sounds like the exact issue I just figured out. If I had to take that damn tranny out one more time, I was going to toss it. My issue was that the clutch would NOT dis-engage no matter how much I adjusted the throwout bearing. The problem was that the splines do not go far enough back for the clutch disc to travel on. I did just as a few others recommended, spacing the trans back from the bellhousing with washers Now, it works great. Boucher'
It has nothing to do with the bolt pattern afaik, just application. I have not figured out to this point which is which, but I have seen both lengths used in the Camaro boxes that I find at the swapmeets. For quick reference as to which input length you have, all you have to do is look at the tip. Either it's 1/2" long or it's 1" long.
Thank Yall for all of the info.. I would just suggest buying the spacer for any one else who has this issue.. If you have the tools you could probably make it.. http://hamiltonintakes.com/products/s10-t-5-swap-adapter
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