I am a little confused about what you are trying to say. Free play in the pedal indicates that the throwout bearing is not contacting the fingers on pressure plate. I think what you are trying to say is you can't adjust the linkage to get any free play.
Dave, I said the wrong thing. I have too much free play. If I adjust it so there is a slight gap between the throw-out bearing and the pressure plate fingers, the clutch pedal releases within an inch of the floor. If I adjust it so there is an inch or two freeplay at the top of the pedal, the throw-out bearing rides on the pressure plate fingers.
The bracket on the bell housing only goes on one way.
The bracket can go two ways, slot up or slot down. I know it can't be reversed so that the ball is towards the bellhousing. LOL
The picture you posted
The picture is from 67valiant100's post. It is not what my pivot and bracket looks like, just an example.
is how it bolts to the bell housing. If you had the slot up the ball stud would be pointing towards the bell housing, pretty obvious that won't work. Or it would flipped over so the ball stud is behind the mounting bolts. From you tape measure in the picture it would be out of position by 4", that wouldn't work either and would be quite obvious.
Ya, I know. It can go one of two ways though.
If your z-bar is not sitting level and square to the centerline of the engine you could have the wrong bracket.
The bracket is the stock one and worked perfectly with the old clutch. I will turn the bracket upside down and see if it helps. I questioned myself when I put it back together as to which way it went.
There are three different brackets for small block a-body applications; 64-66, 68-71 and 72 up. If you look at this link from the Brewers web site you can see what they look like
http://www.brewersperformance.com/products.asp?id=109.
When I swapped in the v8 into my car I wound up with a 68-71 bracket but had a 72+ bell housing and the z-bar sat at an angle up from the frame to the engine with the engine end of the z-bar about an inch further back than the frame end. It worked and could be adjusted but would bind up occasionally under hard acceleration. Got the right bracket and all was well.
Another thing to look at is the actual throwout bearing correct. Compare the new one to your old one the distance from the bearing surface that contacts the fingers to the surface the fork presses against should be the same. The actual bearing is pressed onto the cast piece the fork clips on and this could have been machined in correctly or not assembled correctly.
That is a possibility. The clutch kit I got was supposed to be for my application but that clutch never came on a 66 Dart. It is probably for a truck or Taxi. (10" clutch that fits on a 9 1/2" flywheel.) My application may take a different length throwout bearing.
If you get the z-bar position sorted out, the bearing is correct and you still can't adjust to get any free play then the new pressure plate may not have been set up correctly. I am assuming you have a stock type three finger Long style pressure plate. The position of the fingers can be adjusted by the large nuts on the pressure plate that are in line with the fingers. Adjust the clutch as best you can and have some one hold the pedal on the floor. The gap between the disk and the flywheel should be approx 0.050" if it is significantly bigger that would be an indication the fingers are too high and you need to adjust those nuts to lower them. This should give some more room to adjust the throwout bearing.
Good Luck!