OK men, here we go. Made some progress tonite. I wish I could say the mech. clutch linkage is "done", but nothing in my garage is ever that easy. Got the bracket in place "temporarily", to give the system a test. If you've ever done any drag racing, and pushed on the pedal of a 3200 lb Borg and Beck pressure plate, you know how tough they are. Well, this system is tighter. (My pressure plate is a wimpy diaphragm.) I got it to work, and it hasn't broken "yet", but until the binding is located, I probably won't be pushing it too much, cause something is out of whack. No way the 82 cars had this problem. One thing I don't and never had liked, was the Z bar upper pedal lever, is only a couple inches long. Not much leverage there. Then the pedal pushrod goes down on an angle from the pedal, and bends up going thru the firewall, out to the Z-bar lever. So you have this "bent" rod connecting them. And there's not much that can be done because the brake master cylinder is in the way. But once again, the factory must've made it work in 82, even tho I've never driven one. So here's some pics, as promised.
Below is the pedal pushrod situation. The lower one in the pic is the factory one, and for some reason is too long. (By a couple inches). Why? The ball location on the Pontiac block, is the same as the Chevy, so I don't understand why that is. Maybe because the clutch fork is different? Don't know, but we'll all find out, in time.
I was fortunate enuff to have some scrounge rods in my stash, and they were to become one. The middle one has the end gone, and the top one had a good end, so I cut the 2 of them to length, and joined them with a steel sleeve I had that was a perfect line to line fit. I haven't tacked them together yet, in case some alterations are needed.
Once the rod was in place, because I found I had the small square factory frame bracket, (to the Z-bar end) I decided to try and fabricate the sister bracket that it bolts to. So just by going by pictures, this cabobulation below is what I came up with from scrap iron. Had a piece of 4" square tubing, 1/4" wall thichness, the same as the other bracket. It ain't pretty yet but hopefully will serve its purpose. The other factory one is to the right.
So I drilled a hole to mate the 2 brackets, and lowered it onto the frame, just to get an idea. You can also see the sleeved pedal push rod.
Next comes trying to accurately locate the position of the bracket, to the frame. But before I could do that, I had to tap out the existing mount holes for the bracket. GM made them M8-1.25-20 thread, but I decided to cut them for some hardened aviation 12 point wired head bolts that I had, that were 5/16x20. Most of you know how to tap, so I didn't take any photos of that.
What I have below is "my" method of finding holes. Because me and trig didn't get along, I made a clear plastic template, after marking out the perimeter of the bracket, nestled in its correct location. If you look close enuff, you can see the silver pencil outline of the bracket, the black hole dots, and the clear plastic on top. Then I drilled the holes.
So here it is, all bolted up. Not very exciting, but hoping to get it debugged shortly. Now I need-ta clean my garage that looks like a bomb went off.
