Tiny bit excited

Uneven height of the fingers will result in the clutch dragging rather than slipping as long as all fingers have clearance.
But excessive adjustment of the finger height outside of specification may reduce the overall clamping pressure on the plate, and I wonder if this is the issue. As well as having a maximum difference in finger height, there is a specified height that must be set with only a small tolerance.
Excess clearance on the fingers or pedal will result in the clutch failing to fully disengage rather than slip.

It would be a dream if lockdown was over and some LR gurus could spend a day with me to sort out this clutch issue... I will play around with the settings of the fingers, the cross shaft placement and the pedal adjustment prior to needing to remove the gearbox. Its the last thing I want to do is remove the gearbox (again). I think the friction plate is fine as inspected before, I think all the flywheel bolts are tight, I think my settings are wrong and also due to the age of the metal the cross shaft is not perfectly straight either.

1. there are two sets of x3 bolts to secure the fuel tank - i had some longer bolts/nuts which didn't look right till i bought some new bolts/nuts, so took off the old longer bolts and replaced with newer same length bolts so now looking much better and proper

2. same done to the rear bolts for the tank, now all 6 bolts same size, thread and length as it should be

3. whilst playing around under the car i noticed the low high lever was very loose, so first tightened up the nut from the top end but still had play from underneath

4. removed a loosely fitted bolt, found larger diameter bolt/nut and with some washers removed the slack. i think this is supposed to have a pin and not a bolt but didn't have anything suitable. now the action of the lever is firm and smooth with no slack - another job done

5. removed the tailgate bracket, cleaned and painted in cold gal, need to heat up the end of the chains to widen so that i can fit properly over the pig tail. still to do...

None of these, which I believe to be factory adjusted fingers, show as much thread as yours. Should I ever have need to adjust those fingers I would only attempt it on the bench by following the instructions in the workshop manual carefully.
.W.

thank you BSF, pic helps a lot.
Assuming the previous pic of the pressure plate by BSF is correct location for the nuts to be, I have copied and rewound all my 3x nuts to the same position (which is prob where they were when i bought the press plate new). This has simply moved the top hat further apart from the fingers so now there is a larger gap bw the fingers and the top hat.

1. with all nuts wound out on the press plate fingers, here is the new location of the top hat (pushed towards the flywheel)

2. Again pushed opposite direction to the gearbox

3. here exposing the fairly larger gap bw the top hat and fingers.

if this is the correct position, next i will proceed with playing around with the cross shaft position along with the clutch pedal adjustments and see what happens... more to come

Question - if my friction plate is badly worn (I thought it was ok to use so did not purchase a new friction clutch plate) could the thickness of a new friction plate make up for the bigger gap now in place. This gap to me looks unusually big and the only other thing which can close the gap would be a thicker friction plate or moving the fingers back to my settings exposing more of the nut/bolts on the fingers of the press plate.

1. top hat in undepressed state

2. top hat depressed position, seems like it has a good range of movement

3. position of the pressure plate which was brand new

4. current state of affairs.

my thinking is remove and replace with a new friction plate or resurfaced one, double check all connecting points and reassemble AND hope for the best...

If your driven plate is worn excessively, the fingers will move closer to the tophat. Unless the linings were worn down to the rivets, this is unlikely to be an issue.

Going back over your clutch dramas from last year (posts 847 to 865) you:-

1. Bought & fitted a new pressure plate on 2/7/20 (post 851) without altering the setting of the fingers.
2. However, on 13//7/20 (post 864) you adjusted the fingers. Did you adjust them evenly & as JD advised in post 848?
3. Also on 13/7/20 you rotated the cross shaft 180 deg and finally clutch was operating.

Do you think that your current problem could be a result of not having adjusted the fingers evenly, measuring from the flywheel interface & not from the top of the pressure plate housing as you were doing in post 847?
If the fingers are not set correctly/evenly you will not get complete contact between flywheel & driven plate, which could result in your clutch 'slipping'.

thank you Roger - all points noted but i think i have found one of my problems. fingers were not evenly tightened but have now been put back to original spec as bought. will double check again before fitting. my clutch was in the wrong way (i think please confirm someone)

1. so woke up this morning at 4.30am had a quick shower then before breakfast had to rip off the pressure plate and found the clutch issue - had been thinking about it all night and was super keen to get the clutch off to inspect what was going on. this was the position it was on the pressure plate

2. here is the rear view which i think is the correct placement of the friction plate

3. closer inspection revealed this - the shiny metal holding the springs in have been scrapped suggesting it was in the wrong way round which when releasing the clutch was making that weird sound (old video) but only when releasing the clutch not engaging (which seems weird should be the other way round)

4. again you can see evidence that the friction plate was rubbing on the bolt heads of the flywheel - not good but not too bad either

5. random shot of the pressure plate - now to find a replacement friction plate and go from there, might pop into local brake and clutch centre to see how much to resurface the friction plate if they still do this (these days), found ebay friction plate for $200 new

something else i found out - the 6 springs on the friction plate are three springs and 3 something else - so have ordered new and new spigot

just to add to my wows - bloody fuel tank has a small leak from somewhere so that will need doing as well at some point

Sounds as if you have found the problem. My apologies for not thinking of that possibility.

thank you John and Roger for your help

the new friction plate has 6 springs mine has three and possibly the remnants of the other 3. so new friction plate ordered from Kotara fourx4.

the spigot feels like there is one still fitted, but when i poke my finger in the centre hole, there appears to be another smaller free spinning spigot of sorts which will need to be removed.

1. this end plate for the cross shaft which seemed on mine to be coming out (cross shaft when fitted) may explain why this end bracket is not flat - can someone please confirm this end plate needs to be flat and not curved as is with this one? should i flatten down and refit. I did have this out once before but just want to make sure before fitting gearbox back in. thanks. sorry for all the questions of late...