The purpose of this guide is to offer a general
overview, of whats involved with a RST installation.
It should only be used as a supplement, to your
Ford Service Manual.
 

Raise and support the vehicle.

Heavy duty jacks under the rear axle, additional
jacks (yellow ones) are placed under the control
arms, just for backup.

Heavy duty jacks under the frame rails near
the front tires, to hold up the front end. The
ramps are only there, for backup.

Keep a phone under the car when you
are working, it could save your life if
something unfortunate were to happen.

 

Light up the underside of the car real good.
 

Disconnect the battery

Disconnect the negative lead, then
disconnect the positive lead.

Remove the H-pipe.

I also removed the axle backs, this took the
weight off of the over axle pipes and made
them easier to keep cable tied up and out of
the way.

 

Remove the starter motor

Remove the driveshaft.

Index front and back, so you can reinstall it
in the same orientation).

 
 

Remove the transmission

Helpful hint: By removing the battery and battery tray,
it was fairly easy for me to get to the top two transmission
mounting bolts. The rest I got to from down below.

I removed all of the bolts except for 2 easily
accessable ones... those I left in, until the
jack was in place and the transmission was
fully supported.

I was not able to back the transmission out
and lower it, without the transmission input shaft
contacting the pressure plate. So what I ended up
doing, was to lower the engine about 2 inches.
This gave me the clearance needed, to back the
transmission out and lower it.

Keep in mind that I have a Whipple supercharger
that sits on top of the engine, this prevented me
from tilting the engine as much, as a stock
configuration may have allowed.
 
 

First off, I do not recommend this.

But, if you are set on lowering your engine, here is
how I did it.

Refer to Figure 1.

1) Place your hydraulic jack underneath
the K-Member, as if you were jacking up
the front end (at the location shown with
a red X).

2) Pump it up, so that it's applying some
upward pressure on the K-Member.

                                          Figure 1
 

3) Loosen (do not remove) the "B" bolts about an
inch (do this on both sides of the K-Member).

4) Remove the nuts from the "A" bolts (both sides).

5) Slowly release the jack pressure and let the K-Member
and engine come down about 2 inches. The K-Member
will come down past the length of the "A" bolts.

6) Back the transmission out and lower it down to
the floor.

7) Raise the K-Member and put the "A" nuts back on...

8) Leave the "B" bolts as they are. You will
tighten them back up, after you remount the
transmission.
 

I wanted a little extra insurance... so I installed
threaded rods through the factory alignment
holes, that are between the "A" bolts. I did this
on both sides. The idea was that if my jack failed,
the K-Member would only be able to drop to the
nuts, on the threaded rods.

Cheap insurance (1/2" diameter X  8" long)

The transmission jack in position (got it at Harbor Freight Tools).

 

After you lower your transmission, just push it back a little toward the rear of the car. It
won't go very far and that's where it's going to remain, until it's time to raise and mount it
to the engine.

 

Remove the pressure plate

You will need a way to keep the flywheel
from turning, while you loosen the bolts. I inserted
an allen wrench into one of the holes on the back-
side of the flywheel and let it come to rest against
the starter motor mounting hole.

Insert your clutch alignment tool into the
pilot bearing, this will hold the clutch
disk in place, while you remove the
pressure plate.

Remove the stock clutch disk

Remove the flywheel

After removing the 6 bolts, I couldn't
just pull the flywheel off. I had to put 2 bolts
into the unused holes shown in the first pic
and slowly tightening each one a little at a
time, until the flywheel broke loose.

Inspect the pilot bearing, replace if necessary
 

RST Installation

Clean the flywheel, floater, and pressure plate friction surfaces,
with an alcohol based solvent.

Sometimes parts are shipped with a light coating
of oil to prevent rust, this must be removed.

Before installing the RST kit on the vehicle, I laid
everything out in my garage and loosely assembled
it. I wanted to get familiar with the bolt patterns and
to make sure all the pieces were there.

McLeod Billet steel flywheel.

"Bottom" clutch disk.

Blue ring with floater.

"Top" clutch disk.

Pressure plate.

The mock up also helped me find the appropriate holes in the flywheel,
for the three dowel locating pins. I do believe however, that I could have
left the dowel pins out and everything would have been just fine. Use
your own good judgement, on whether to install them or not.

I used blue loktite on the flywheel, blue ring and
pressure plate bolts.
 
 

Alright, let's get it on to the car already.

Mount the flywheel

Rotate the flywheel until all 6 flywheel bolt holes, line
up with all 6 crankshaft holes. If the holes are not lining
up, you have not rotated it enough, keep going.

The Ford service manual calls for 59 ft/lbs of torque,
for the flywheel bolts.

Mcleod steel billet flywheel

 
 

Mount the blue ring (with floater attached),
along with the "bottom" clutch disk.

I torqued the ring bolts, to 33 ft/lbs.

At this point you can pull out the clutch alignment tool
and let the "bottom" disk rest in place.

Install the "top" clutch disk.

Mount the pressure plate

As you are slowly making your way around tightening
the pressure plate bolts, slide the clutch alignment tool
in and out, this will help keep the two clutch disks in the
best possible alignment, with the pilot bearing.

I torqued the pressure plate bolts to 23 ft/lbs.

Congratulations, your RST installation is now complete.

Additional notes:
 

I also replaced the slave cylinder.
The 2 slave cylinder bolts, get torqued to 15 ft-lbs.

Also, there is the matter of how to cap the hydraulic line, once you've
disconnected it from the slave cylinder. If you don't have the correct
cap for this, as a last resort you can use the cap that comes on a
new slave cylinder. It is not perfect and mine had a slow leak. I
suppose if I had taped it, it might have sealed better.