They determined the 440 with a 4-speed would be too much for the little A-Body's rear end, especially the small bolt pattern! They were not willing to change the bolt pattern and brakes at the time. I had a 68 GTS 383 4-speed car that was converted to a 440, of course all the linkages for the clutch were fine.

Knowing Norm - He just called the 69's GSS's to keep that "exclusive" 1968 feel around the cars.
Truth is - he ended up selling many of the 69 440 Darts anyway as Chrysler was having trouble marketing them.

We are separated by a border but I still believe you!

Chrysler engineers figured that with the 50 or so added HP over a 383 Dart, and a guy hammering gears with a 4 speed rocket ship like these cars were, it mite result in a lot of un-necessary broken parts. The Torqueflite would be easier on things and a wiser chose. Remember these cars did have at least a 12 month, 12,000 mile warranty, that Chrysler would have pay to fix things. Plus with that huge 440 RB motor in the Darts small engine bay, plant engineers figured there was little to no room for clutch linkages and such.

I've got another theory on the reason a four speed was not available with a 440 A-body. It was likely just a simple lack of available parts (or creativity). An 18-spline four speed in 1969 required a steel bell housing that fit the 143-tooth flywheel. The 383 bell had the two threaded holes for the engine side ball pivot bracket to put the z-bar in the correct location in an A-body. The bell for the 18-spline only had one threaded hole for the threaded stud that was used in a B-body.

True but there were 68 Hemi Dart 4-speeds, so the parts had already been figured out. I am sure they were in limited supply and would add quite a bit of cost, so it may be a combination of bean counters and engineers that said no.

Yeah, but the hemi cars may have been built with custom parts at the Hurst facility. Anybody have pics of the clutch linkage? Our last solution to the '69 bell in my son's Dart included moving the torque shaft down and back to make easy use of the single threaded ball stud.

The main change in the clutch linkage was to the ball stud bracket that had the centerline moved due to the k-frame being spaced down 1/2" to make the Hemi work with all the components. The Max Wedge STEEL bellhousing was used and the ball stud bracket mounting holes had to be enlarged to use the correct bolts.

Do you have a pic of the bell?

Yes, here it is plus the modified bracket:

Drawing of the modifications made:

That bell has the two threaded holes on the side just like the 383 bell. If you look at that area of this bell ('69 440 B-body) there is a bolt in the single hole location. Making an engine side bracket required some funky fabrication along with a long stud through the bell from the starter.

Yep the steel bell has the holes but they are smaller for the original application which was a max wedge so they need to be drilled out larger and tapped for the A-Body bracket bolts. The picture above shows the max wedge ballstud.

In other words the factory would have had to use a 23-spline trans or the outdated max wedge bell to put a four speed behind a 440 in an A-body and probably come up with a few more A-body size Dana 60s...

Basically, though the Dana's were B-Body anyway which is one reason the quarters are cut.