How bad does a clutch/pressure plate have to be?

The tractor had just been moved a couple weeks before, and had sat around in the elements for God knows how long, and the clutch always released, so I"m pretty sure it wasn"t rusted to the flywheel.

We finally pulled the clutch and pressure plate last Friday. There"s some light surface rust, little more than a brown stain (i.e. smooth) on the flywheel and both sides of the clutch disk, and some light surface rust on 2/3 of the pressure plate"s surface. 1/3 of the pressure plate"s surface is clean, indicating that the plate was making uneven contact IMHO. There are many small cracks in surface of the pressure plate, especially around the clean portion. I ran a metal straight edge along the surface of the pressure plate, and the outer rim is higher than the rest of the clutch by about 3/32" most of the way around. There is one high spot.

Does any of this sound like it would be a problem? The clutch disk is worn down almost to the rivets, so we"re replacing everything, but I"d still like to know if we really needed to.

My 46 H had a similar problem. Soft pedal and it would not fully release when you pushed the clutch pedal. I removed the clutch assembly but the disc was still at 50% and the fly wheel and pressure plate looked good. After a good cleaning and thorough inspection of the pressure plate, I noticed a crack in one of the fingers on the pressure plate. Replaced the finger and installed a new disk and she's good as new.

K-Mo

For what little I'll end up using this tractor, the clutch is going to last a good long time as-is.

Having a tractor around is not cheap, I would think, mucking around in the grease on a monthly basis would make tractor ownership even less attractive.

Replace 'er all. No sense doing it again.

Allan