Hi, I have a 1930 Chrysler 66 roadster. I have replaced the cluth plate due to car sitting for years and oil leaked onto clutch plate. Now the gearbox is not engaging into gear propery with the pedal right to the floor and no matter what you do the gears grind when attemting to drive. I made all adjustments as per manual. I guessing I need a new bearing on the gear drive and a new bush in the flywheel. Any thoughts as to my problem. The gearbox was doing the same thing before installing the new clutch plate.

Do you mean the gears grind when you try to shift into gear? That is a dragging clutch problem. Is it possible the new clutch disc is too thick? Or that the clutch is not adjusted properly? There should be about 1 inch of free play at the pedal. This means when the pedal is all the way up you have to press it down 1 inch before it engages. There is supposed to be a spring under the car holding it up.

If it was doing it before, maybe someone changed the pressure plate. If the pressure plate fingers are not adjusted for your car, it wont disengage or engage properly. I doubt the problem is is the drive gear or teh pilot bushing in the engine being too tight. If it was too tight ypu would have a hard time getting the transmission in. If the adjustments are correct, is the fork arm that releases the throw out bearing worn or bent?

Cars of that age have synchromesh only on 2nd and 3d gear. They will grind going into first or reverse unless the car is dead stopped.

Thanks for the feedback, dragging clutch is what I have. Anyone know what thichness my clutch plate should be? The handbook says to have 5/32" clearence from pressure plate fingers to throwout bearing, does that sound right? I also don't quite understand handbook instructions on position of throwout bearing on shaft. The handbook says to position throwout bearing before adjusting pressure plate fingers. Can anyone give me a simpler explanition?

It's quite possible that the fingers are misadjusted and not pulling the pressure plate back evenly so that it clears the disc. In the dim, dark past I rebuilt clutch assemblies for a living, and finger adjustment is critical. From memory, all the rebuild manuals had you bolt the pressure plate to a flat surface (no disc in place) and then set finger height using a dial guage referenced from the flat plate. As I remember, no more than 0.010 variation was allowed, although Borg & Beck clutches (Mopar use) are much less sensitive than some other makes to slight misadjustment.

Brian