Thanks for that report, greenfield. It sounds as if the clutch thrust bearing was hanging up on the burrs in a damaged bore in its housing, though the explanation is not really clear to me - I think we'd need pictures of the damaged thrust bearing mounting.
That bearing has to be very rigidly located. Center punch impressions are not load-carrying locating features. How do I know? When I was a school kid a colleague brought around his car, which he had just finished improving by removing the whole exhaust system and pounding a piece of straight copper pipe over a short piece of the original exhaust pipe bolted to the end of the exhaust manifold. The copper pipe fell off after a few minutes and he asked me to fix it. I refitted the copper pipe, but applied a center punch vigorously, punching many little cones of copper into the steel exhaust pipe. Marvellous improvement: it lasted one day, IIRC. Sounds as if that technique worked about as well for you as it did for me.
On the crude clutches used on Greenfields, the clutch thrust bearing carries the entire clamping force of the clutch. That force is quite substantial, and requires a proper, bolted-together bearing housing that locates the thrust bearing positively.
