I hope you guys can help me out. I have been working on an R-154 project that is similar to what you guys are doing. In my case I am attaching the R-154 to a 5.7 Hemi (3rd gen) and using the Dakota bell housing, this is going into a 71 Cuda. I am going to also use the Dakota hydraulic master and slave cylinder, throw-out bearing and clutch arm. The flywheel is a 130 tooth type, 10.5 inch pressure plate. Since the Dakota uses a 143 tooth flywheel I had to relocate the starter pocket inboard to accomodate the 130 tooth flywheel but this does alow me to use the AA clutch disk which is 10.5 inches. The pressure plate I tried to use was a standard 10.5 inch Borg and Beck lever type that was used on the early 70s mopars. I realize that the Dakota used a diaphram pressure plate and I plan on switching over to one of these.
My problem is that when I assembled everything the throwout bearing was solidly up against the levers of the pressure plate and the bellhousing bolts had not even been tightened up yet. I wonder what you guys ended up using for a pressure plate and also wonder if you could give me the depth from the tip of the diaphram where the throwout bearing contacts it to the flywheel surface. I'm not sure if a stock Dakota pressure plate is shallower on this dimension than the pressure plate I am using now but it would certainly explain my clearance problem. I also noticed alot of slop on the throwout bearing where it slides along the input shaft collar of the transmission, I wonder if anyone has the outside dimension of the input shaft collar of an AX15 so I could compare it to an R-154. I appreciate any help you can lend on this project.
