New Clutch.....Problems

After a lot of careful inspection. Here is what I have found. I dug out the 45 year old pressure plate and disc that was in the car when I bought. I bolted the two to a spare fly wheel. The old organic clutch disc measured .265" compressed. The fingers depressed down .090" from the edge of the pressure plate cover. See arrow in picture.
I got under the car and was able to roughly measure the same gap on the pressure plate also with nothing touching the fingers and I have a huge .375" or 3/8"gap.
The new disc measures 5/16" thick or .3125" when compressed. Thicker because it is new, but I don't believe that the fingers should have deflected 3/8" when the pressure plate is bolted to the flywheel.
So the conclusion that I have is, that I have a pressure plate that has it fingers already traveled something like 3/2 of their stroke before the throw-out bearing has even touched the fingers. So when the clutch releases the fingers just shy of hitting the disc springs.

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