MG Car Repair: 69 mg midget clutch problem, clutch components, release bearings

Question
Recently bought a 69 mg midget that had sat for 17 years. led After much work on brakes, interior ect. started car and it started! Unfortunately had no clutch pedal. Rebuilt master and slave and and bled system, and still no pedal. Pulled engine and found release bearing totally gone(actually wore into metal). Bought new clutch kit(pressure plate, clutch housing and bearing) and replace them. Now I still have no pedal. If I hold the slave push rod in I get good pedal and the push rod moves about 1 inch with pedal.Looking in the inspection hole in side of clutch housing the release bearing is still not touching clutch housing( still needs to move appox. 1/4 inch to touch).Looking for suggestions. Thanks for an suggestions you can offer.   Max  

Answer
Hi Max,
The early Midgets & Sprites used three different release bearings depending on which transmission was in the car and many had mismatched transmissions. The difference between each release bearing was the position of the side pegs. The oldest one had the mounting pegs displaced to the rear away from the flywheel and clutch the next in line had just a small amount of offset and the latest had the pegs with almost no offset. If you still have the old one look at it to see which it was. That is only one possible cause.
As I remember there were also different thickness pressure plates.

Has the slave cylinder piston reached the end of the bore of the slave cylinder? Even though the push rod and piston move only one inch, the starting point is what is important. Pull the rubber boot off of the slave cylinder and hand push the push rod against the clutch arm (fork) until the release bearing contacts the pressure plate, then note if the push rod has extended so far as to clear the opening of the slave cylinder. If not, just pump the clutch pedal until the slave cylinder piston reaches the rod. If the rod does clear the end of the cylinder then something is wrong inside. meaning you have the wrong clutch components for this transmission.
On Midgets you can't count on the year model of the car because so many transmissions and engines of older and newer cars will bolt in. This makes a lot of possible combinations of components. In the dealerships I worked in I had to measure and match up the new parts against the old parts. Some mechanics back then tried to document which parts went with which trans. Smooth bell housing vs ribbed bell housing and tall pressure plate vs thin pressure plate and add in the three different release bearings and it was a monkey puzzle. Some mechanics would remove the push rod and weld an extension on the end when they found a mismatch after they installed everything because they didn't want to remove it to correct the problem. I would not do that because if there was a mismatch and you just extend the rod, you have changed the arch of the arm and thus made the release bearing slightly off center when depressed which shortened the life of the release bearing. I found many Midgets and Sprites with welded push rods so I knew they had a mismatch in it's life time.

Some cars had a strong return spring on the clutch arm and if you only need a small amount more in movement remove the spring and pump up the clutch and see that the slave piston is not trying to come out of the cylinder bore. Then if it works ok either lengthen the rod or leave the spring off.

Let me know,
Howard