Saturday was a fine day to replace a clutch in my '63 544. With the help of a 122 man (who kept mentioning all the extra room he had in that series) we managed to get the tranny, bellhousing, clutch, flywheel and pilot bearing out. We sprayed degreaser on the tranny and bellhousing and took 'em to the local do it yourself car wash. Both looked great afterwards -- nice clean aluminum and volvo red paint. All the new parts went back in fine with the exception of the clutch pedal shaft. The rubber bushings basically fell apart.

After putting the shaft back together without the bushings and letting down the car the clutch pedal was pretty loosey goosey but went down and came back up. I could even see the fork arm move pretty good on the outside of the bellhousing. The trans seemed to shift fine with the car off. With the car started though I could not shift into any gear. I tried shifting into 1st with the car off and then started her up. The car lurched forward and I could not disengage the clutch.

Does this sound like something that new bushings in the pedal shaft and some adjustment of the thrust shaft will fix?

Thanks for reading,

Joe