Clutch Pedal Return Spring Sprung?

[Randy Brown]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post on this forum and I'm hoping someone can help with an issue I ran into on a '80 five-speed I just picked up. The car needs quite a bit of work to get back on the road, and the first priority was the brakes. I pulled the pedal box out of the car and refurbished everything and reassembled with new MCs. My question is: on the bench when I depress the clutch pedal it travels a couple of inches with the return spring applying back-force until a certain point is reached where the spring violently snaps the pedal the remaining distance to the full-stop position (to the floor if it was installed in the car).

Is this normal? When installed, does the clutch mechanism apply sufficient force to overcome the return spring pressure and return the pedal to the point where the return spring pulls it back to the dead stop? I've checked the reassembly and nothing looks wrong. I don't want to reinstall it in the car, bleed the system, and find out that there's actually something backwards somewhere in the pedal box.

Thanks, and any help is really appreciated.

 

[JDExSquid]

Until you bleed the system it sounds normal.

It shouldn't do that once it's bled properly.

 

[Dan Sarandrea (Phila)]

Hi Randy,

Yes that is normal, the spring is an "over- center" spring that is designed as you describe. Clutch pedal travel in the X is supposed to be somewhere around 6.5 inches (exact figure is in the shop manual). For the first couple of inches the geometry has the spring pulling the clutch pedal up and back toward the driver. Then there's the balance point, and beyond that point in the travel the gemoetry has the spring pulling the clutch pedal toward the front firewall, providing an assist to the driver as he depresses the clutch pedal, trying to overcome the power of the clutch's pressure plate springs.

This album has some pix of the same job being done on my car ('86 FI).
http://s14.photobucket.com/albums/a341/DSarandrea/091010/