Overly Sensitive Clutch

I would personally try drilling a hole in your clutch pedal below the existing pin and double-nutting a hardened bolt through it for the chain to mount. Simple, cheap, effective.

 

When you say there is only 2” before disengagement.... that is off the top of pedal travel? Like if you are driving and push in the pedal to shift, the clutch releases within the first 2” of pedal travel, then as you start to let off the pedal there is no action until the pedal is 2” from the top and removing your foot?

 

Yup. And there is a small amount of travel at the top after fully engaged.

 

Lots of pedal travel- small section When clutch does anything. I think that is what the others are trying to fix as well

 

I’ll look at that for sure.

 

Pictures please of your setup.
It only takes about 5/8" travel at the clutch itself to get release. All clutch forks are 3" from the stud/mount to the center of the to bearing. The farther away from to stud to the cable attachment, the more the arm will have to travel to get the travel necessary.

 

I just thought of something. In the original design, the pedal pulled on the lower arm on the clutch pivot tube. That turned the tube and pulled on the upper arm to pull on the clutch arm. The arms on the tube were not equal lengths. The longer arm is on the bottom, and the shorter arm was on the top. This gave the pedal more mechanical advantage, slowing the clutch arm action in relation to the pedal.



The chain setup works on a 1:1 ratio and removes any and all mechanical advantage. It would make total sense to want to slow the clutch arm action down after installing the chain.

 

I have an AA chain control. I have about half of my pedal travel in the engagement range; very easly to modulate or slip my clutch. This Jeep came to me with this setup, so I don't know what throwout arm is in there. Either way, I really like the chain setup.
-Donny

 

That’s what I thought was happening. I love the chain concept. Just lost that geometry provided in the torque tube.

 

This thread inspired me to try something... My v6 clutch has always been really stiff/hard. Heck, so much so that sometimes my leg would shake holding it down! Seeing how much available travel I had versus how much I needed to fully engage/disengage the clutch led me to believe I could decrease the effort by reducing fork travel. So I drilled another hole about 20% closer to the centerline of the tab on the brake/clutch shaft and lo and behold, the clutch is noticeably less heavy now and still has plenty of free motion on each "side" of the "zone." I had also gotten rid of the cable between the bellcrank and also the link between the two bellcranks and replaced them with proper rod ends and threaded rod using Woody's "Smooth Clutch Kit". The kit itself didn't make the clutch any lighter, just a bit smoother and eliminated the rod wear issue between the two bellcranks.

BTW, Drilling that hole was a pain in the butt. That tab is case hardened! My 15 year old daughter helped and after all was done, she commented on the pedal pressure saying "it was decently heavy but she could deal with it." Before, she was not happy about the prospects of ever driving it.

John

 

Great thread guys. I've had the "clutch is like a light switch" problem (and the shaky leg problem) for a long time. I'm planning to redrill the jackshaft hole at some point to see if it helps. One thing that helps the stiff clutch problem is lubrication. There are zerks on the pedal pivots and I installed zerks on the jackshaft. If I wait too long between greasing, I notice a big difference in the stiffness.

 

Back working on clutch. I ordered this longer fork but way to long. It would be into the brake MC.




Decided to try to shorter the throw at the other end of the chain.

 

i took off the pedal and flipped the tab down drill a hole lower. Not one drill bit I own will touch this part!!! WTF IS this made from and how do I get a hole in it????

 

Have any small carbide burrs for a die grinder?