Looking for Chevy 4.3L Swap Owners

[DMC VIN 6639]

Anyone else have a chevy 4.3L swapped Delorean. I am looking for recommendations on how clutch spacing is achieved. My car came to me with the 4.3L and a custom aluminum bell housing that was made years ago. I just pulled it apart and my clutch has worn through the friction material. I believe I am slipping due preload at the throwout bearing and a step detail missing on the flywheel. The set up is all wrong. The use of spacers in between the engine and bell housing makes me wonder if the bell housing was intended to be used with a shorter flywheel. Anyways, hopefully someone reads this and can share their recipe.

[Helirich]

Anyone else have a chevy 4.3L swapped Delorean. I am looking for recommendations on how clutch spacing is achieved. My car came to me with the 4.3L and a custom aluminum bell housing that was made years ago. I just pulled it apart and my clutch has worn through the friction material. I believe I am slipping due preload at the throwout bearing and a step detail missing on the flywheel. The set up is all wrong. The use of spacers in between the engine and bell housing makes me wonder if the bell housing was intended to be used with a shorter flywheel. Anyways, hopefully someone reads this and can share their recipe.

I’m sorry I can’t help you, but I would love to see lots of pics of your set up. I guess you have it apart now. How was it when you had it running?

[DMCMW Dave]

That sounds like Darryl Tinnerstadts car. He's owned it twice. His name on this forum is BLWNAWY.

He is only on here once in a while, but you could try to PM him. He's the original builder of the 4.3 conversion.

[Rich W]

That sounds like Darryl Tinnerstadts car. He's owned it twice. His name on this forum is BLWNAWY.

He is only on here once in a while, but you could try to PM him. He's the original builder of the 4.3 conversion.

I don’t think this is Darryl’s car, since Darryl T. was on here recently and said
his car was motoring around near him locally on a regular basis. In addition,
Darryl T’s car is a supercharged 4.3L and IIRC, Darryl used an adapter plate
instead of a custom bell housing. As mentioned, all recently rebuilt and sold.

As to the original post, I currently own an engine swap DeLorean with a 3.8L
Turbo V6 (from 85 Grand National) and I am told uses the same early custom
bell housing as the 4.3L V6, so either myself or Dave Swingle may be able to
help with some issues you may have. Dave helped sort out my 3.8L setup.

[Rich W]

Anyone else have a chevy 4.3L swapped Delorean. I am looking for recommendations on how clutch spacing is achieved. My car came to me with the 4.3L and a custom aluminum bell housing that was made years ago. I just pulled it apart and my clutch has worn through the friction material. I believe I am slipping due preload at the throwout bearing and a step detail missing on the flywheel. The set up is all wrong. The use of spacers in between the engine and bell housing makes me wonder if the bell housing was intended to be used with a shorter flywheel. Anyways, hopefully someone reads this and can share their recipe.

As I previously mentioned, Dave Swingle helped me sort out a project car with a 3.8L setup
back in 2003 (in his new garage, before we did the Monster Garage - Monster Nation show)
I have some of the photos on Tamir’s EnterMyWorld website and here on the Forum, in the
Custom DeLoreans - Rich W. section, under Grand National DeLorean.

As for other 4.3L setups on this Forum, there are a few, but I do not know if they regularly
visit here (especially in pandemic times). There are about a half dozen, between Carb, TBI
and EFI versions (pulled from both cars and trucks), some running DeLorean transmissions
(manual and automatic), some running Porsche 915 transmission (Duke has this setup).

More here are using adapter plates than custom bell housings, some with custom flywheels.
When I got my project car, the bell housing needed repair and reinforcements to handle the
torque and then Dave found a place to cut a step in the flat flywheel that had been installed.
The input shaft also needed a custom cup fabricated to mount the pilot bearing in the crank.

Check out the photos and let me or Dave S. know if you need some other recommendations.

Good Luck.

[Dickey]

The old Buick 3.8 bell housing pattern will be different from a Chevrolet 4.3 pattern. There are commonly available BOP to GM Corporate adapter plates to accommodate this adjustment though. Offhand I'd wonder if OPs bell housing was running against a 3.8 at some point and employed such an adapter but later swapped in the 4.3. I can't think of any legitimate reason to use spacers unless I'm just completely imagining the situation incorrectly. I don't think the DMC transmission has enough room for a 168 tooth flywheel that would typically be found behind a 4.3 so I have to guess it's a 153 tooth which bolts right up but is an oddity. Doesn't explain why someone would put the wrong throw out bearing in there unless they did happen to do the aforementioned engine swap and reused the 3.8 throw out bearing because it seemed adequate and already compatible with the transmission components. I don't have any old 3.8 pressure plates or flywheels laying around to know if the springs would sit shallower than the regular 4.3/350 type setup. Pics of the components and assembly involved here would help a lot.

[BLWNAWY]

I don’t think this is Darryl’s car, since Darryl T. was on here recently and said
his car was motoring around near him locally on a regular basis. In addition,
Darryl T’s car is a supercharged 4.3L and IIRC, Darryl used an adapter plate
instead of a custom bell housing. As mentioned, all recently rebuilt and sold.


Not quite what I said - the car was sold locally and is seldom seen.

As for your clutch issue, my conversion was quite different. I sent a Chevy flywheel to Centerforce and had them re-drill it to fit one of their DeLorean clutches. I then used measurements from the flywheel face to determine the thickness of an adapter, and had one made from billet aluminum using my pattern. Since it retained the stock DeLorean/Renault bell housing, clutch fork, slave cylinder, and t/o bearing, everything lined up just as it would on a stock vehicle. I did have to slightly clearance the bell housing to fit the 153 tooth flywheel. The car is still on the road with only one known clutch replacement since 1995.

68113

I would recommend you replace the clutch and t/o bearing with quality parts, check clearances and t/o action. and try it.

[Nicholas R]

Share some photos of how the spacing is achieved and the problems you're seeing. There are a lot of people with engine swap experience now.

I believe the 4.3L uses the same bellhousing bolt pattern as the LS and SBC engines so there may be opportunity to refine the swap with some more modern parts if necessary.

Shameless plug for Josh's Site: https://www.lsdelorean.com/swapkits

[Josh]

Share some photos of how the spacing is achieved and the problems you're seeing. There are a lot of people with engine swap experience now.

I believe the 4.3L uses the same bellhousing bolt pattern as the LS and SBC engines so there may be opportunity to refine the swap with some more modern parts if necessary.

Shameless plug for Josh's Site: https://www.lsdelorean.com/swapkits

Thanks for the plug nick!

Rob and I have been talking and i was actually able to help him a little with his setup.