Damaged Pressure Plate Straps
Hello all, I am hoping some of you might have had this problem before and can shed some light on it. The pictures are a brand new Pressure plate from my 1970 Dart 340. I've had a heck of a vibration with the new engine and clutch parts and finally tracked it down to the pressure plate drive straps. As you can see in the pics one of the straps is bent from compression. The pressure plate is now about 1/8" off center, think I've found the vibration! What I'd like to understand is how can this happen to only 1 of the drive straps? I could see damaging all 3 of them from hard downshifting but not just 1.
This has about 150 slow miles on it while I was sorting out the new engine and then testing everything trying to find the vibration. It was not driven hard, no burnouts or other hard driving. It was vibrating so bad I didn't want to take it over 3,000 rpm.
Right now I am thinking shipping damage. But the whole point of this post is that I do NOT want to do this to the new pressure plate, so I need to figure out if I did anything wrong. I know the answer to that is "you should have better inspected it before installation" but I've done quite a few clutches and never had an issue like this.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts!
Ken
Normal strap
Bent strap
Note the off center overspray
Plate close to strap on one side
Plate farther from strap on other side
Hello all, I am hoping some of you might have had this problem before and can shed some light on it. The pictures are a brand new Pressure plate from my 1970 Dart 340. I've had a heck of a vibration with the new engine and clutch parts and finally tracked it down to the pressure plate drive straps. As you can see in the pics one of the straps is bent from compression. The pressure plate is now about 1/8" off center, think I've found the vibration! What I'd like to understand is how can this happen to only 1 of the drive straps? I could see damaging all 3 of them from hard downshifting but not just 1.
This has about 150 slow miles on it while I was sorting out the new engine and then testing everything trying to find the vibration. It was not driven hard, no burnouts or other hard driving. It was vibrating so bad I didn't want to take it over 3,000 rpm.
Right now I am thinking shipping damage. But the whole point of this post is that I do NOT want to do this to the new pressure plate, so I need to figure out if I did anything wrong. I know the answer to that is "you should have better inspected it before installation" but I've done quite a few clutches and never had an issue like this.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts!
Ken
Normal strap Bent strap Note the off center overspray Plate close to strap on one side Plate farther from strap on other side