$%#@&&!! Centerforce!

[BLKMGK]

Went to bolt on the pressure plate for my clutch today and got a VERY nasty surprise. Seems of the 6 pressure plate holes only 5 were tapped! I checked with Mikelly and he confirmed there were no dowels or anything used and that all of his were tapped. I figured this was the case since the stock LT1 flywheel I had was tapped all the way around but... Very aggravating since I'd had to struggle to torque down the ARP flywheel bolts. Speaking of which - "standard" ARP pressure plate bolts will NOT fit this type of clutch - too short (grumble). I was forced to reuse the stock ones.

 

Anyway, after I spoke to Mike I called my friend who runs the Mustang shop. He giggled, seems he had the same problem just days ago on a darned dampner from another company. He told me to yank the flywheel off and bring it to him. Sure enough the hole was drilled just fine and simply needed tapping. He had a VERY nice MAC tap set and had the hole tapped in less than 10minutes - gratis. A real relief since I don't trust my Taiwanese (sp?) taps for anything this critical!

 

Got home, slapped it back on, and moved to the set back plates. It figures, even after running bolts through the tapped holes in the JTR plates I had troubles and had to pull out my own tap set to clean up some of the holes! I'm thinking that perhaps having a nice tap set around would be a good idea but I still felt better letting someone else tap that flywheel.

 

Tonight the motor sits on the end of the hook, trans in place. I need to clean up the engine bay just a bit, install the freshly powdercoated crossmember, and slide the motor in. I hope to do this tomorrow unless it gets real cold out I can hardly wait - my friend really saved me today, I was in a real panic over this. Whew!