Thread: clutch engagement

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Originally posted by lt1s10
ok mike its your car and you can do what ever you wont to, but the person that told you to preload the pressure plate so the bearing wouldnt "jiggle" around is smoking something he ant suppose to.

Hello all!!!
While I am not well educated on other makes/kinds of clutches, i have a lot of experience dealing with cable driven t5 transmissions and clutches.

Having preload on the pressure plate is a must. It was designed this way. A quick search on any mustang board, or even with Ford will verify this.

The reasoning is simple, and if you don't believe me, you will find out anyhow that you'll have to do this. If you don't preload the pressure plate, the throwout bearing will essentially be loose. Quite often this will cause an extremely annoying squeak and rattle that comes from the pressure plate. this arrises from the t/o bearing being loose and scraping against the pressure plate fingers. Partial pressure on the clutch pedal usually relieves this annoying sound. Clutch cable must be tight enough to put slight pressure on the t/o bearing, that's why it's making noise. (however, the t/o bearing will not always make this sound when too loose) I can't tell you how many people have ripped out their trannies and replaced the t/0 bearing because of a squeak, but didn't know it was a simple clutch adjustment problem.

It's almost impossible to not preload the setup in a t5/cable driven application. If you don't tighten the cable enough, the clutch will simply not disengage all the way. This will cause the clutch to pick up RIGHT off the floor, it will be difficult to push it into first gear, and the other gears, and reverse will have excessive grind.

To adjust correctly, my best advice is to adjust the cable tight enough so that you have maybe an inch or two movement of the pedal up from the floor before it begins to engage. This will ensure that the clutch is disengaging all the way upon pressing down with your foot, and will ensure that you haven't placed excessive pressure on the pressure plate.

To the original poster: sounds like it could be too tight. First of all, be sure your cable is not binding at all. IT MUST have the longest possible and smoothest arc possible down the the clutch fork. To tight of an arc, and it will bind and stick.

When pressing on your clutch pedal, as mentioned, you must feel a little slack. If the entire thing is extremely firm, you are way too tight. It must have at least a tiny bit of slop on the top, or slack. If not, you are constantly disengaging due to too tight of a setup, and you are gonna smoke your clutch.

You have a custom setup, so I can't tell you much more, other than the sn95 (newer mustangs) have a near identical setup, but the clutch cable is a little longer, and may give you a little more slack if you need it. to order the longer sn95 cable, you can go to www.maximummotorsports.com, and they sell the oem cables there. Use it with the firewall adjuster and alum quadrant if you don't have that already. That cable is identical to the fox cars, just longer.

Jeremy