Hi Randall
I do appreciate the necessity for the bolts to be a good fit for the
location of the gearbox input shaft and have been known to both, preach the
necessity to always use the dowel bolts, and to rant and rave about rank
amateurs who have charged others huge sums of money to change a clutch and
then ruined a gearbox by not using the dowels.
I guess that when I said ordinary bolts, I have been lucky to go to my box
of salvaged bolts and retrieve bolts to use as dowels that have been a tight
fit in both back plate and gearbox holes. (tested before assembly!) I have
sometimes found loose bolts and re rummaged until I found tight ones.
If you have some ground stock 3/8 dia you could die the ends and fit a nut
each end, I would use silver steel stock if that was my route, comes ready
ground and can be oil or water hardened and tempered if required, very
stable during hardening / tempering, probably would loose <0.0005 inch
during hardening in water.
I think you will find that the other 2 standard hardware 3/8 bolts are quite
a bit longer as they are for the starter motor.
I would tend to agree with you on the dowels causing a great deal of
problems with clutch problems on this range of engine / gearbox combination,
I always use dowel bolts (usually the originals) and rarely have trouble
with gear changes, and when I do it can be traced to other areas of the
system!
Apologies for any confusion caused.
Graham.
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