Has anyone ever removed this spring on their clutch pedal, so that the ONLY springy force was from the pressure plate diaphragm spring itself, rather than from the pedal? If so, did you like it? Hate it? Didn't notice any difference?

 

the one on my 87 had been removed before I got the car, the only thing is that the pedal would not return all the way and I would have to pull it up with my foot to use the cruise. so for the most part it kinda sucked cuz if I went over a bump it would fall down and shut the cruise off other then that just be sure you don't start it in gear with the clutch out

 

Also be aware that not removing all the pressure may cause the clutch to wear faster, sort of like resting your foot on the pedal, only not as bad.

 

so even just that something-like 1lb pedal arm resting on the force of the PP will cause clutch wear? and I was thinkin' that the PP was springy enough to push the pedal all the way back up as long as the clevis rod was adjusted properly. Mainly my issue is that this new PP is softer than my old one (LuK something) and therefore the switchpoint of the assist spring is MUCH more noticeable. It might have a little to do with my SS clutch line and the deleted loop junction as well. If i adjust the pedal so that the clevis catches with no freelpay, then the engagement is JUST on the up-side of the switchpoint, which caused me to either stall or peel out basically every time. So i wound the clevis in a little bit, so that it catches on the other side of the switchpoint, but now i have major freeplay. basically when i wound the clevis in, it sucked the slave cylinder piston back in as well (rather than drawing in some more fluid to fill the gap), so every time i push the pedal it has to push the pushrod out to touch the release fork, then disengages the clutch. I'm going to re-bleed everything just to see if i can get the freelpay to disappear, but i have a feeling that even if it does go away, then it's going to be exactly like it is when the clevis is wound outward - catching on the up-side of the switchpoint. Unless backing the clevis out causes a dynamic change in the way the clutch engages.

See, the pedal only moves the clevis rod through about 60% of its travel. Meaning if you adjust it so that fully pushed meets the front stopper, you have a minimum amount of fluid in the master cylinder. Making it so the pedal all-the-way up is at the rear stopper means you have the maximum amount of fluid in the master cylinder at all times. Will the amount of fluid in the chamber of the master cylinder affect how hard or soft the clutch engages? If so then that may be my solution.

 

k well re-benchbleeding the mcyl did not help. i blame the tight clearance of my slave cylinder for not allowing the spring inside it to take up the slack. it's real tight so only hydraulic pressure/vacuum are making it move, so leaves a small gap between the piston and the pushrod that has to be taken up as apparent freeplay in the pedal. however i went ahead and took out the assist spring and well, it ain't half bad. i made sure that the pedal does NOT top out, rather it has about .5mm of play to reach up and touch the pedal stopper, but basically is at normal height (half a mm isn't very much). so there's no pretension on it, and there's no stupid stiff lumpy feeling in the middle of the pedal travel either. my LuK PP was super stiff. so it was OK to have the assist spring, because it just smoothed everything out. no with my softer exedy OEM pp, the assist spring had WAY too much say on what was going on. so i yanked out and engagements smoothed out unbelieveably. pushing the clutch to the floor is harder now, but the shifting is much smoother. doesn't take a full push of the pedal to disengage the clutch b/c the action is all up front.

in summary: clutch is NOT being pretensioned as it would if you rest your foot on the pdeal and shifting is smoother ESPECIALLY launches and 1-2s.

i do not reccomend this if your PP is already fairly stiff. but if you have a massive lump feel in the middle, at least give it a shot. ps - you set the pedal height by adjusting the clevis rod. set it as high as it'll go before hitting the stopper.

 

o and one more question, more a verification of what you guys know. am i correct in thinking that having a failing injector in conjunction with 3 out of 4 engine/trans mounts shot to hell making similar symptoms to a chattering clutch?

 

what happened. picsss!

 

pics of a dynamic thing? like... what do you want pics of? the spring having been removed? main thing I have to remember now is to just make sure i'm pushing it as far as i think i am b/c now that it gets stiffer at the end, it maybe feels like i pushed it farther than I did. but i think my SS line is adding to the stiffness just a little bit but that's OK b/c at least it's consistent unlike how some rubber lines can be.

 

Could be.

 

Forgive me but I was lost in the kilometer long txt with no chapters... No need for me to see what a clutch system is - but me would like to dechipter whatis your problem in this simpleton... but never mind. Main thing is main thing.

 

the problem i had was that with my newer, softer pressureplate, the assist spring was overtaking the PP spring, and causing the pedal pressure (combination of spring and PP) to look like y=-b+x^-1, where the more negative it was, the stiffer it was, and at the middle, it got VERY stiff. now the pedal pressure is smoother from top to bottom, and the pedal is no longer launching my foot away, meaning i can control it much more precisely and much more quickly too.

 

2 days ago i decided my PP was well-broken-in enough so i put the assist spring back, in. tried it for a day. could not drive my freaking car. the assist spring wasn't doing any positive work (helping) until the pedal was mostly down. so it was really light down there (could hold it down all day and not break a sweat) but the problem was that the switchpoint was just after that, so it would stick to the floor kinda (not actually stick, but tension-wise, it seemed that way) and then suddenly rocket up once the switchpiont of the spring passed, which made it almost unmanageable (meaning that i stalled all over the place, and was rolling back dangerously on hills before finally stomping the brake or launching like i was drag racing). i also listened to my tranny to see at what point the internals stopped spinning. so i found that point in the pedal depression and adjusted the lower and upper stoppers accordingly. the overall pedal travel is way shorter now. no wasted space really. but i took the stupid assist spring back out as well. so now the way i have it is that the clutch pedal travel is basically disengaging the clutch as soon as you start stepping on the pedal, engaging almost as soon as you start lifting off the pedal when you have it pushed, and cruise works fine. i set the top switch (cruise cancel) so that the button is pushed in enough by the pedal that it won't disengage over every bump, the pedal height is the same as the brake pedal, and doesn't make a loud thump across the dash of the car when you lift off the pedal (because the pedal stops before it fully pushes the cruise-cancel button, so it doesn't ever hit anything hard. but it hits the cruise button well enough to allow cruise to work even on bumpy roads). and the clutch picks up pretty quickly when lifting off the pedal, which really helps in 2nd-gear-pickup turns, since my car LEEEEEANS like a mother (new Suspension Tech or Addco swaybars on my to-do list in a few months!) and i need my left foot to hold me from falling over in the seat haha, meaning that before, when it was time to pick up the clutch and power out of the turn, i had a lot of dead space to pickup through, and often i'd pick the gas up too soon and it would go THUNK and slam the broken engine mounts around. now it doesn't do that as much.

moral of the story: my clutch [pedal] feels REEEEALLY sporty now, and my car is 5x as fun to drive now. which sucks with gas prices these days haha b/c all i wanna do is drive it! a side effect is that i can drive it smoother, esp when shifting from 1st to 2nd at very low (parking lot) speeds. even with the very very broken motor mounts. even so, still can't wait for new motor mounts!!! and no, my clutch is not being worn/slipped by this mod because i can still pull up on the pedal freely for another quarter inch. the weight of the pedal itself is not enough to slip the clutch.

i can take pics and vids tonight to show you how the stoppers and stuff are adjusted.

well, as i've found out, with a little more tinkering... just run up the clevis adjuser, OR adjust the position of that switch (do the latter if you like the resting height of your pedal). the diaphragm spring on the PP is way way way stronger than the little dinky spring on that switch... so it'll hold its own if you adjust the switch height.