I mis "looked" LOL. HERE is what might be happening..........You shimmed the assembly way to far ahead, and the snout of the TO was actually pressing on the clutch disk, "trying" to keep it engaged.
When I set up the TO bearing I made sure to leave a gap between it and the pp fingers, that gap was about 3-4 mm, and so it needed all those shims, I agree that's a lot of them.
Looking at the clutch disc, does it look like a standard mopar type? Or does the center hub (where the splines are), look too long?