Here's my dilema, I want to install a hydraulic clutch into an early bronco, sick of the old mechanical linkage.. The Bronco has a 302 with the stock bellhousing mated to an NP435. My question are: Does anyone know of a Ford Rig with the same bellhousing that came stock with a hydraulic clutch? That way I could get one from a parts yard. If not, have any of you swapped in an aftermarket, if so any info you can provide on the swap would be very helpful..

Thanks..

I have only heard (never seen) people using the Bellhouseing from an 80-90's f-150's and bronco's, its an Alunminium bellhouseing that useing an internal slave cly bascily

Heres whatcha need and this is what I am running in my heep.

Aluminum bellhousing flywheel slave cylinder and bracket from a mid 80's f-250.
I think the flywheel is going to be larger then the cast steel housing that is in the EB now maybe.
The flyheel may need to be remalanced due to the balancing changes they made.
You can even pull the master cylinder and pedal assembly out of the same doner and plug it all in.

Originally posted by Rocktoad
Heres whatcha need and this is what I am running in my heep.

Aluminum bellhousing flywheel slave cylinder and bracket from a mid 80's f-250.
I think the flywheel is going to be larger then the cast steel housing that is in the EB now maybe.
The flyheel may need to be remalanced due to the balancing changes they made.
You can even pull the master cylinder and pedal assembly out of the same doner and plug it all in.

Ohh yeah i forgot Todd is running this

With my dana44 front 9" rear 5.0 NP435 combo I can now BullShit with the eb folks:D

Thanks for the feed back. Its good to hear that I am not the only one wanting to do the conversion.. I just found a website from a guy who did a custom conversion for a hydraulic clutch install. If your interested the link is http://tillbuilt.com/ , once there just scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the My Bronco Buildup link, then link to the Hydraulic Clutch section..

What I have in my 73 EB is a 351w to a NV4500 to an Atlass II and I am running a 3500lb centerforce clutch and it is not hydro. I have rod ends every were and new nylon bushings in the Z shaft and it works like butter and not very much peddle psi at all. And the bonus is I won't be sitting on the side of the trail trying to bleed it out after it ran out of fluid or trying to find a hose or slave or even the master, so don't ask me for parts on the trail but I will be more than happy to pull past you and give you a hand! Just my $0.02.

Like rokcrln I run Spherical rod ends on all my linkagees for the clutch and I don't worry about breakage.

But since you asked, My old '84 Bronco had a 300 six and the NP-435 with Cast iron bellhousing and external Hydro Clutch linkage. The bracket for the slave cylinder simply boltet to the bellhousing where it attached to the block. The 300 six and the EB's both use the larger 164 tooth flywheel so the existing flyewheel should not have to be changed unless the '84 used too big a clutch. You could get any where from 10" to 11" clutchs on the same 164 tooth flywheel. If these parts will work then it might be possible to not even have to pull the old bellhousing off of your EB

Anyway, good luck.

Eric

When I did my conversion, I used a 75 landcruiser slave(cheap, good throw, versatile) and I made my own bracket. For the master, I used my stock BII unit, but you can probably use the landcruiser master, or just about anything that will fit well.

http://home.earthlink.net/~mattsara/bb/slave.jpg

I have been looking into this same thing for my CJ-2A with an sefi 5.0 and an NP435. As I remember an 87 F150 with the NP435 used the annular slave cylinder which bolts up inside the bellhousing. My jeep is not finished yet and I have not gotten far enough to test this out, but it looked like the only modification was to possibly drill some holes through the bell housing to run the main and bleeder hoses through. It also is foing to save me a ton of space.

I considered one of those internal slave/throwout bearing units, but aside from being expensive, they don't make for very easy trail repairs.

The NP435 with the aluminum bell come with a hydraulic external slave. I looked for one, and couldn't find one. Turns out that setup wouldn't have cleared my header anyway. Now I have a cheap metal slave vs. the expensive plastic slaves that would come stock.

The price on those internal slave cylinders I think are around
$170. When you add up all the extra parts the that one part replaces when buying them new I do not think the price difference is that much.

I had an F150 with a 300 I6 in it and the manual trany that I wheeled hard for 8 years and had 2 clutches through it with out replacing that internal slave cyclinder and never had a problem with it. That does not mean much but I have a few friend that own similar trucks and I have never hear of one of them destroying an internal slave either.