It’s hard not to panic when you push down the clutch pedal and get nothing but a loud “POP” as your foot hits the floor. It’s even worse when you’re 20 miles from home and approaching a busy four-way stop at 55 miles per hour. Nonetheless, that’s what happened to me in my 1965 Dodge Dart a few months ago, and in keeping with the theme I had set with my Volvo 1800S over the winter, I made a faulty diagnosis that led to a lot of needless work. For the most part.
At least the experience was a chance for a new adventure; I had never driven a car home with no clutch, and now I have. I can tell you that it’s nerve-wracking at first. Luckily, the Dart starts fairly readily, so I put the car in first, put my foot down on the accelerator slightly and cranked the starter until the Slant Six caught. Then, I waited until just the right speed, eased off the gas, muscled the shifter into the next gear as gently as I could, and kept going. It was jerky getting started, but after that, it was no big deal. But I wouldn’t want to do it again.
At my first opportunity, I took off the bellhousing “inspection” plate and looked over everything I could under the car, including the clutch linkage. Unfortunately, the real problem was stubbornly either hiding in a shadow or behind another component. Furthermore, I thought that the pressure plate levers looked a little low, and that low-mileage (sadly) throwout bearing was noisy, so…
I decided to spend a Saturday in the garage doing a leisurely clutch job. The clutch that was in the Dart came with the 1974 225 that I installed in the car back in 2014, just after I bought it from Wildcat Auto Wrecking in Sandy, Oregon. The engine, which was sitting on the floor of a machine shop for years, reportedly had only about 45,000 miles, and the clutch looked fine (still does, as a matter of fact).
I have few regrets in life. One is not hiring the guy to tear down and rebuild the back half of my garage for $13,000 back in 2007 (a lot of money for me at the time). Another is not leaving the pilot bushing (that I installed in 2014) in the car as I did this clutch job. It was a bear: The bread trick didn’t work, the grease trick didn’t work, and the rented puller from the parts store didn’t work. It was too late to go back at this point.
I’ve never had a pilot bushing give me trouble, but I had to chisel this one out, which means that I had to pull the bellhousing, making the entire job even more miserable.
I’m obviously opening myself up to ridicule when I reiterate that I did this all for almost nothing (my only solace is that, once again, the throwout bearing was going to need replacing sooner or later), so I’ll save any more of the details of the clutch swap.
(By the way, you can just see the real problem that I missed in this picture.)
I will mention this: I recently had to do the job again because the new pressure plate I bought online sounded like a barn door that needed the hinges greased. When I took it back out again, I found the offending lever by stepping on it in the garage; therefore, I cleaned up those 52-year-old Mopar parts and reinstalled them (the clutch now works fine by the way).
After making a long story short (truly), I can now reveal the real cause of my “clutch” problem, and if I spent more time on slantsix.org, I would have saved myself a lot of time in the garage. The clutch Z-bar ripped, a problem so common on early A-body cars that it probably should be a chapter in the non-existent handbook for owning one. Unfortunately, I don’t own more than one of any car, so sometimes a common problem will pop up that I’ve never dealt with before.
Still, I should have known; I had to adjust the clutch twice in the weeks before this happened.
After finally seeking out the expertise of those on slantsix.org, I formulated a plan for ensuring that the Z-bar won’t tear again in my lifetime (as long as my mediocre welds hold). I called Brewer’s Performance, Inc. in Ohio, a well-known source of Mopar transmission parts, and asked if they could hook me up with a Z-bar. They didn’t have one for a 1965 Dart with a Slant Six, but they did have a much-more-substantial tube of the correct length; all I had to do was cut the arms off the old one and weld them back on the new tube. This required some fairly precise measurements.
To do this, I cleaned up a piece of scrap metal and affixed the old Z-bar to it with strong welding magnets. Then, I marked all the measurements and outlines with a Sharpie so I could reattach the arms in the same locations relative to the tube itself (which also has holes for a clip that secures the plastic bushings that the Z-bar rides on).
In this picture, you can see how much beefier the new tube from Brewer’s is; I can’t imagine that this will ever have trouble with a stock Slant Six pressure plate.
After cutting the arms off the old Z-bar with a cutoff wheel, the next step was aligning them to the new one using my “fixture.”
After making a few tacks to hold the arms in place, I then welded them up with about the same amount of skill and concern for aesthetics as the guy who welded them up at the factory. Yeah, I’m not going to show you the finished welds I made with the old $100 Harbor Freight flux core that I use when old, dirty metal is involved (I’ve embarrassed myself enough already). Needless to say, it’s not going anywhere…I hope.
So after some fits and starts, the Dart is back to Darting around the Michigan landscape, being the best all-around beater wagon from a Mopar salvage yard that one could hope for. Mistakes were certainly made on my part, and indeed it was a rough winter/spring in the garage as I tackled this issue while trying to make heads-or-tails out of all my Volvo’s problems. Needless to say, these were some dark hours where I wondered why I do all this, but not all days are wins when you’re a shadetree mechanic keeping a bunch of old, worn-out stuff on the road.
But there are worse ways to spend one’s time, and besides, it’s good to stay humble, even if it hurts your ego.
Related Reading
My 1965 Dodge Dart 170 Wagon—Fixing The Driver’s Door With A Maple Tree (by me)
My 1967 Volvo 1800S: The One Where It IS Running At The End (by me)
There will be no disrespect coming from me on this one! Anyone who can fabricate/weld-up a part in his garage is someone I have nothing but admiration for. And how did we ever manage before forums!!
My first serious repair job was a clutch in my 6 cylinder 68 Mustang. My buddy and I took all day, but got it together – and discovered that the clutch would not disengage. We took it apart the next morning and discovered that the clutch disc was 1/4 inch bigger in diameter than the rebuilder’s box said it was. A much simpler fix than yours, but frustrating nonetheless. We were sure a lot faster on the job the second time.
Great question! Before car forums, we relied on older guys who had already made the mistakes we’ve made! That’s also probably why they had so many car clubs back in the day. But in reality, we probably just screwed things up more often. 🙂
I have taken too long to learn that every boasty and confident account of just about anything elides the failures along the way, partly for reasons of egoistic, deliberate omission, but just as much from the natural instinct within which rewrites and removes the past such that there is room in us to cope with the present.
I once replaced an entire set of 4-wheel drum linings on an old Peugeot, only for the brakes to be just as bad as before: there are reasons to start by checking the condition of the master cylinder, I found. In re-telling that tale of woe, it was (I’m sure) only all about the heroic struggle with weird French springs and clips and general nuttiness, and my great victory thereover.
I like the stories of defeat, like yours here. Not only more honest, they’re usually more informative. To whit, I thought z-bars went under the back of errant swing-axle Beetles, but now I know there are plenty in clutch systems too.
And that they can break.
I’m sure there are a few talented mechanics out there who leave nothing but gold dust on everything they touch, but as you know, cars (especially old ones) don’t always care about your good intentions. The goofs and gaffes are part of the process, and given how many old cars I’m able to keep on the road reliably, I feel like I’ve done OK.
But I do feel like a bit of a bonehead on this one. 🙂
I’m glad my most epic brake problems involved Avid Juicy 5 bicycle brakes. These are much smaller and much cleaner to work on but can give you a skewed perspective. I was working on a car and thought the pads were still good because on a bicycle 3mm is almost new.
I’m also currently trying to resolve a misfire and and managed to douse one bank of a V8 due to a poorly seated fuel injector
You learned a new trick. We all learn something working on this old stuff even if we never need to do that again.
That’s always my attitude (after a cooling-off period) when things don’t go well: At least I learned what NOT to do.
To replace the pilot bearing, I’ve seen a guy find a rod the same diameter as the inside of the pilot bearing, then fill it full of heavy grease. Then put the rod back into the pilot bearing and hammer on the rod and the grease will push the old pilot bearing OUT
No disrespect, you didn’t give up and figured it out with a better than new solution.
A random professional may have been no better, as I always say why pay someone to screw up your motorcycle (or car) when you can do it yourself for free?
Oh, I have seen a lot of “professional” repairs and they’re often much worse because the tech clearly wanted the car out of the bay ASAP.
Glad to see the 65 Dart wagon fixed. My parents bought a 65 Dart 4 door with a three on the tree about a week after I was born. We had it for about 5 years. I have always loved Darts of this era. I had a 66 for my first car and a 75 Dart for my second. My grandmother had a 66 Dart she drove until 1988. Learning and figure out how to fix stuff on your own is the “fun and pain” of old cars. Glad the Slant 6 Club and others were there to help along with vendors. As time slips away, people who had experiences with these cars, their problems, and solutions to them fade from memory. Glad you figured it out. The clutch is probably set for a while. Great work!
Thank you! At some point in time, you reach a point where you realize that you ARE the expert on something, and there are few people left to help you out if things go sideways. It’s a little sobering.
The only “clutch job” I ever did was also a two-fer. My ’63 Monza 4-speed started making a very unpleasant sound from the bell housing, a clanging sort of sound. This was in the winter of 1972, it was my first car, and I had mechanical experience beyond oil changes and such. In typical youthful hubris, I decided it must be the throw out bearing, although I had no idea of what a bad throw out bearing should sound like (clanging??).
There was a co-op garage outside of town where one could work on one’s car in the warmth. I managed to get the engine out by using only two scissors jacks and a large timber! That took some creativity, grunting and cursins. Corvair engines are not all that light at all. I replaced the bearing and of course the sound was still there. Argh!
I happened to notice a Corvair sitting outside a machine shop in town and so I went in and asked the owner (of the shop and Corvair) about my sound. He instantly diagnosed it as a failing flywheel. Turns out Corvairs have a two piece flywheel that is held together by rivets and these can start to stretch or fail, causing one half of the flywheel to hit a bell housing bolt.He said he’s fix it for $10 if I brought it in.
So back to the garage for round two, which did of course go faster. But by the time I had it out it was dark and everyone had left. I had to walk some 5 miles back into town carrying my flywheel on a zero degree night. And of course the fix cured the sound.
This is the beauty of the internet. Google “Corvair flywheel makes clanging sound” and the top result is about loose rivets.
That is exactly why the internet is a good thing, at least in the car world. I leaned heavily on the Corvair forums early on in my Corvair ownership, and I’ve had the power pack out of my car at least four times in the last 20 years. It’s something you want to get right the first time, because there are about a hundred different oil leaks possible from the bellhousing area.
One of the times the powertrain was out, I drilled out all the rivets one at a time and bolted my own flywheel, but I eventually replaced that with a bolted unit from either Clark’s or California Corvairs because I was trying to cure some pretty bad clutch chatter.
Good times. (?)
Speaking of false diagnoses, I’m trying very hard to avoid one regarding a clanging sound from my Farmall Cub’s drive line/transmission/rear end. I’ve posted this video I made at a Farmall Cub forum and have gotten a pretty wide range of responses, but one or two seem like they are likely useful. I’m going to have to tear into it this fall or winter, my first job of this kind. I’m a bit apprehensive but it is less scary than diving into a Porsche 356 transmission or such. It’s a about as simple as it could be, from what I’ve heard and the pictures I’ve seen.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MTKuVYrpaSI
It’s too bad that a tractor is kind of unwieldy to jack up and leave running in gear so you could listen to the various parts. I guess you could pull the back tires (although they’re probably a million pounds) so you could narrow it down to the transmission or the rear end. It’s weird because it seems to be a “fast” noise.
Actually it’s not very heavy; about 1500 lbs. And your idea is a good one, to jack up the rear wheels (which I’m going to have to do anyway to swap in the wider rear axle shaft. I will definitely be doing that to try to isolate the origin.
Lots of folks on here wring their hand over newer technology, but having dealt with problematic clutch issues in vehicles with mechanical- and cable-operated clutch linkages, I’ll take a hydraulic clutch linkage any day of the week.
I had a 1961 Dodge Lancer Hyperpak car back in the 60’s and replaced that shaft 2 or 3 times before doing. something radical. I swapped in a 340 with torqueflite. Problem solved.
That is super cool!!!!
Never knew there was a Dart wagon…
One day, at a red light, returning to work from lunch, the clutch cable broke on my 1975 Civic.
When the light turned green I pushed the pedal to put it in 1st, and pop!
Luckily, I didn’t have a line of impatient northern Virginia worker drones behind me to honk their horns.
I quickly figured out to start in 1st and hunt/grind rev matching from there.
Made it back to work and a co-worker took me to a nearby dealer for a replacement cable.
In hindsight I should have seen the writing on the wall when the clutch adjustment reached the tight end of its range.
Normal clutch wear would send it in the opposite direction.
Sometimes, the answer is sitting right in front of us and we miss it…I know I sure did! Hey, it must have been nice to pick up the replacement part the same day!
Boy, how I envy your large garage ! . I have a tiny 1923 “T” Model Ford garage I’ve never even had a bicycle in, too crowded .
Happily I live in So. California and set up a nice shady canopy thing so I can work on my Concrete driveway .
Dry / worn out pilot bearings cause myriad problems, good you fixed it right this time out .
I’ve shaded my eyes and I still cannot make out the broken clutch pivot arm in your picture .
Your welds look far better than any I’ve ever done =8-) .
You B-Body wagon looks great, I keep trying to find rust bubbles, keep it sharply tuned and drive the wheels off it ! .
I don’t see any “bonehead” moves here, you keep after your cars well IMO, unless you’re OCD like me and clean the undercarriage and driveline with a tooth brush once a year or so as I do I don’t see how you’d spot the broken weldment .
Further, extra clean under carriage means MORE RUST where you live so don’t do that .
-Nate
Meanwhile, I envy people just outside of town with pole barns! 🙂
Thanks for the moral support… 🙂 I try to share the whole process of working on old cars, and we’re all bound to miss something here and there (and probably more often than most of us will let on).
The picture of the ripped Z-Bar was actually taken after I hammered it back into relative shape using a socket inside the tube itself. I welded it up afterward so I could get the car back out to its rental storage until I came up with a new plan, but I didn’t have much confidence that it would hold for the long term.