New Quick time bell housings

I just want to know if anyone has installed a new 2018 quick time bell housing on a big block with a stock 4 speed. This would be in an e-body of course. I just want to know if the stock fork worked correctly? Was the ball stud in the right location. Any issues? I read on this site that people had issues with this bell housing 2012 but nothing in the last few years. So I'm thinking that quick time has fixed those issues they where having. Any advice would be great or update. Thank you for your time. Ken

This might not answer your question, but I had a QuickTime bell housing for a small block A-body that I bought new 12 years ago I think in 2007 or 2008. Just last year comes time to install it and I read up on the ball stud bracket on the bell housing was flexing. So people were making stiffening brackets to be bolted/welded on the bell.

I then found that QuickTime revised the bell housing in that area. I called them on it and they actually after all these years, warranteed it and sent me the new one, of course I had to send my old one back them.

Here's pics of the old one. You can also see they did not have a starter pocket integrated. It was just a cover you bolt on.









Here is the revised bellhousing, you can see where the ball stud bolts up, its boxed in nicely. Same for the starter nose cover.

Take that China!

Convertcuda, I received your PM ... Here's what I ran into when I converted from an old Lakewood bellhousing to a nice new Quicktime bellhousing ....

First off, I had the Lakewood for probably 30+ years. I don't consider a bellhousing to be a wear item but the Lakewood became difficult to dial into the block. I was experiencing some hard shifting and the pilot busing was getting beat up. I pulled the tranny to replace the clutch disk, resurface the flywheel and decided to dial in the bellhousing to block alignment. The Lakewood was out by 0.015" ... I had previously welded on the bushing kit to get the alignment down to 0.007" total which was the best I could do. On the latest go-around, I could get the runout down to 0.006 but when I tightened up the bellhousing to block bolts, the alignment would shift out by another 4 or 5 thou. I finally came to the conclusion that the bellhousing was warped and trying to get it to 0.004" total run-out was futile. I had read the story behind Quicktime and knew that it was a couple of pounds lighter than the Lakewood so I bit the bullet and plopped down the credit card.

Parts arrived shortly thereafter. My first surprise was that the Quicktime block saver plate didn't have relief holds for the lifter valley oil galleys pipe plugs. The Lakewood that these holes. Of course, the pipe plugs in the back of my block sat about 1/4" proud from the bellhousing mounting plane. I transferred the location of the holes from the Lakewood to the Quicktime and drilled the two holes. I got the block saver mounted and then bolted on the flywheel.

I did a test fit of the QT bell and it dial indicated out of the box at 0.002" total runout ... I was happy. The Lakewood weighed 36-1/4 lbs ... the Quicktime weighed 26-1/2 lbs ... there's just under 10 lbs weight savings there ... every little bit counts! The design of the QT really reduces the volume inside the "can". I could get my hand inside the clutch fork access hole in the LW ... I could barely get my fingers inside the QT. I bolted in what I thought was the correct clutch fork pivot and inspected the rest of the bellhousing. I went to mount the z-bar ball stud and found that the bracket that held the ball stud was pretty thin. I didn't think I could get enough threads cut in there to hold the ball stud over time. I thought about adding a nut to the back side but the metal mounting bracket folds over right in the area where you would try to fit a nut. Plus, I though that getting a wrench on there to tighten it would be a big pain. I didn't want to weld anything onto the bracket and catch the eye of the tech inspector at the track. I figure that welding on the bellhousing could void the SFI rating. So I made a little backing plate and ran the tap through both pieces of metal at once. I briefly thought about going to a hydraulic throw-out bearing but they're pretty pricey and I was still recovering from the bellhousing purchase.

So in my post above, you can see the backing plate. I added two roll pins to the backing plate (interference fit) and drilled holes in the ball mounting bracket on the QT(slight interference fit) so you can press the backing plate into position with your fingers and it will stay there. I'm running a Centerforce dual-friction clutch setup ... the diaphragm clutch pedal pressure is pretty light so there isn't much stress on the ball stud mount but at high RPM with the centrifugal weights kicking in, there might be flex there and the mounting plate threads would give up at some point. Better to address this now rather than have it fail while out driving on the street.

I started to eyeball the starter mounting and noticed that the upper hole in the mini-starter was bigger diameter than the hole in the QT ... so I whipped up a little reducer busing.

I buttoned everything up, adjusted the clutch and headed out to the local Friday night car show ....

No issues driving the 10 miles to the show. It felt great having the 'Cuda out on the road again ... I love driving that dinosaur

Unfortunately, on the drive home, something bent or flexed and the clutch linkage no longer actuated the clutch. I was only a few miles from home so I flat shifted it back to the house. I got the car back up on jackstands and inspected the the area where the clutch fork went into the bellhousing. It was pretty clear that the pivot bracket had folded over (see pic below). And it looked like the clutch fork wasn't seated properly on the pivot. Bummer .... what the heck? I pulled everything back out (shifter, trans, bellhousing).

When I installed the QT, I eyeballed the pivot geometry from the LW and tried to replicate. I took a good look at the clutch fork. There are a few different forks out there. I converted the car to a stick back in the 80's and used swap meet parts. I broke the outboard portion of the clutch fork off way back when so you can see how we boxed it in and added a support behind the round flange. Then it occurred to me that maybe the clutch fork had the wrong dimensions ... maybe the distance between where the fork hit the TO bearing and where the pivot recess in the fork was different than the pivot to input shaft centerline. I also noticed that the two different pivot brackets supplied with the QT bell had a different "offset". Humm ... could there be more to this than I thought?

And those brackets had different pivot heights (see below) ....

So I mocked up the throwout bearing with the fork inside the QT and I drew lines on the QT where the pivot point lined up (see second pic). Then I found the pivot bracket that had the proper offset. That was the bent one so I straightened it back out. I put everything back together and went to adjust the clutch ... it turns out that the pivot height was too low which put the clutch adjustment linkage near the end of the travel. That left the adjustment rod very long and I figured that would bend next. So I tore everything back out and took an approximate measurement of this height from the LW bellhousing. I made a little shim and installed it between the pivot bracket and the bellhousing (see last pic).

Ok - keep reading ... we're almost there ....

So I put everything back together ... now this time, I was very careful with inserting the clutch fork. As I mentioned before, there is very little space in the throwout bearing area and you will find yourself cursing the Mopar Gods as you try to get your big hand in there to guide things together. It was at this point where I realized that the fork retainer clips on the throwout bearing were causing a problem. The clips on the throwout bearing tend to be on the wide side so when you are trying to get the fork inserted, the clips don't really land in the right spot. I have a few new throwout bearings and the clips on all of them tend to be set wide. I did a little bending to improve the situation. And I was very careful to be balanced against both clips as I pushed the fork in that last little bit. This is where the tight confines of the QT work against you. With the LW, I could get most of my hand in there and guide the fork into the throwout bearing clips .... no way can you do this with the QT! So I got everything inserted, I carefully checked that the fork was fully seated into the pivot and that the clips were properly connected to the fork (boroscope). The adjustment on the clutch adjustment rod was right where I wanted it so the pivot height was proper. I buttoned everything back up and have been driving it with no issues for the past three years!!

It was quite a bit of work to get it right and a hydraulic throwout bearing would have really simplified things but it is what it is. I hope that by reading this, I might save someone some headaches ....

For a while, I have been thinkling of putting my Cuda back to a four speed just to make it more fun without trying to go faster....Then I saw this.

Not sure I would even want one if I was doing a build after seeing one come apart the other week.....

I think that we all need to run a clutch-tamer to avoid the catastrophic shock failures ...

If the can can't contain the clutch if it explodes it's junk. There is no way that disc should have come out of there.

I thought those days were gone too....We have better steel and we are not using thin OEM parts to race with anymore....

Dragula, you beat me to it. That was not a good situation. There was video also. I have had both, Lakewood and Quicktime housings in my hands at the same time. There must be a reason why there is almost a 15 pound difference in weight between them. I had every intention of using the QT housing in my new build, but not after seeing that. It will be either a Lakewood, or most likely a Browell housing. Trick Titanium is a little pricey, even for a second hand housing.

To be fair... the owner of that car did disclose that he made a hole in it for clutch adjustments, didn’t use the block saver plate, so there was no lower structural support.
The hole is where the failure point started.
Im sure quick time is getting beat up over something that really wasn’t their fault.

That changes things a little bit.

The hole didn't do a thing. Not running the block plate is just ignorant. There's no other way to say. IGNORANT.

How stupid must one be to leave the block plate out? What ignorant excuse can one try to palm off for that??

So that leaves two questions.

Why didn't he have the block plate installed?

Who was the jackass that let it get through tech?

Edit: Third question.

What made the clutch fail?

All those need answers, but you can bet your ass that adjustment hole didn't make all that happen. No block plate damn sure did though.

The clutch failed at the pressure plate attachment points. This is a common failure point of this particular clutch. The debris caught the hole and started the tear. I can only assume that the owner assumed he didn’t need the block plate because it is an early hemi with an aluminum adapter stacked in there already.

Curious...what clutch is that? I know there are some McLeod pressure plates that take a pretty special bolt and if you don't use them, it screws up the cover. And they didn't like using studs and nuts either. Learned that the hard way.

I've seen 3 clutch explosions in my life. Thankfully, none were mine. Two had holes in the bottom to set air gap. One had a hole in the face to set base pressure and none of them failed like that.

Actually 4. The first clutch I saw that came undone was a Pontiac. No scatter shield. It totaled that car and the guy damn near lost his foot.

They stayed up all night changing the clutch and forgot to torque the flywheel bolts. My buddy was standing right there with me when it let go. He used to make fun of me for running a scatter shield on my 12 second street car.

That Monday, he went and bought one for himself. Actually admitted it scared the [censored] out of him. I didn't tell him it scared me too. But he never again did he tell anyone running a scatter shield was dumb.

You can purchase a new lakewood bellhousing and have them install an access hole with a cover plate in the bottom of the bell and have it Re-SFI Certified by them.

The clutch failed because the disc was installed backwards. Look close at the pic. But that's no reason for the housing to fail. Missing the block plate, I'm sure contributed immensely to the failure.

I also saw a rumor that the bolts to the block were missing or loose. Still, when the complete disc comes out it's hard to stop. I've seen one cut it's way out of a Lakewood more than once. It ain't pretty.

The disc was placed there, it didn’t stop there. The failure was the pressure plate. The aluminum that holds the friction surface cracked at the anchor points. This failure point of the clutch is or has been addressed.

As far as I can tell, no. You can’t buy one. There isn’t one for an early hemi, or a small block mopar. I did buy an old lakewood for a small block, but new is not happening. Maybe they make them by special order? No listing for them though for that application.

It was a BB mopar i was referring to, I Would have thought they would have a small block or early hemi also available.

Herb McCandless can put an access panel on a Lakewood and do a recert. But it can't be a 30 year old rusted old housing. Has to be something fairly recent.

Bob Lambeck had a clutch pressure plate explode on his old 1968 Cuda A/M production car back in the mid 1970s at Fremont dragstrip in 2nd gear with a Lakewood scatter shield with no block plate, parts of the pressure plate went through the front sub frame and the roll cage front down bars in the engine compartment The scatter shield looked like a M60 tank had ran over it flattening it almost flat
You can use the best safety parts available when racing but many of those parts are not upgraded and made better until someone has a major failure that exceeds the design limits of those parts