Awesome Clutch Adjuster Mod

[Dirk37]

I've been fighting with my stupid clutch adjuster for the past few weeks. I'd pull the pedal back and it would adjust so far out that it would grab the last like 5% of the pedal and I'm pretty sure the clutch wasn't fully engaging. I'd been pulling the pedal back and pushing the quadrant forward until it engaged where I wanted it. It would work ranging from once to a few days before it would self adjust back to a nearly undrivable position.

I got fed up with it the other day and came up with a solution for a sort of manual adjuster! The pedal tensions the cable with a huge spring that sits in the hole in the pedal shown below. So I grabbed the spring with pliers and unseated the hooked end from the hole so it quit tensioning the cable.

Then I pulled the pedal back and using a pair of needle nosed pliers, grabbed the end of the cable (the gold/silver thing in the middle of the blue quadrant) and pulled it back to where I wanted it, then released the pedal.

Now the pedal engages right off the floor and it's sooo much nicer to drive! It also stopped auto adjusting to ******** positions. I'm going to try finding a weaker spring one of these days so that it's will self adjust to an acceptable position, though it is nice to be able to manually adjust it.

I would highly recommend keeping a pair of pliers with you at all times in case it somehow auto adjusts to the point where you can't disengage the clutch.

 

[rubydist]

you don't want the clutch to engage as soon as you get the pedal off the floor, because the clutch is not disengaging completely in that case so it wear much faster and be harder to shift.

 

[Dirk37]

I've got it about 2 inches off the floor, compared to where it where it was engaging it just feels like it's right off the floor haha.

I did a test just to be sure by jacking the car up, putting it in gear, and slowly letting the clutch out and the wheels don't move until about an inch off the floor so I know it's completely disengaging.

 

[sperold]

It is a good write up but I am not familiar with the clutch mechanism enough to see exactly what you are doing. I did not see the spring in the first picture.
When I have an issue, I will look this thread up and figure it out.

I have never worn a clutch plate out, maybe getting that last bit of adjustment would give me that pleasure.

 

[Dirk37]

Here's a picture of the back of the pedal with the spring visible. You can see how the spring pulls the blue thing (called the quadrant) towards the driver putting tension on the clutch cable (the cable runs through the valley in the top middle of the quadrant).

(In this picture the quadrant is pulled all the way towards the driver by the spring. The cable would be very tight in the case and have a very high engagement point.)

On top of the pedal there is a ratchet mechanism (the white thing) that interfaces with the teeth top of the quadrant.

(Just to avoid confusion - In this picture the quadrant is all the way away from the driver because I removed the spring and was playing with it. The cable would be very loose in this case and have an extremely low engagement point. )

The ratchet allows the quadrant to move towards the driver whenever the cable is loose enough for the spring to move it. When you pull the pedal back, it releases the ratchet and the quadrant can move away from the driver loosening the cable.

The tighter the cable, the higher the pedal engages, and the looser the cable the lower it engages. For some reason, these have a tendency to overtighten the cable moving the release point way up the pedal. A temporary solution is to pull the pedal back, and push the quadrant away from you towards the firewall loosening the cable, but as you can imagine eventually the spring will pull it tight again.

By removing the spring, the quadrant will never make the cable any tighter because there is nothing to pull it forward. It will also never get looser unless you pull the pedal back and release the ratchet.

As long as the teeth on the ratchet and quadrant are good, the clutch pedal will stay wherever you set it too, so essentially we've created a manual adjuster.

 

[sperold]

Great explanation, and thanks for enlightening me. By turning the mechanism around, it really explains things. Nice to know. And a great help to us all.

 

[Dirk37]

You're welcome! I couldn't find an explanation of how it functioned when I had issues, so I figured now that I understand it I should pass the knowledge along