Clutch pedal noise and remediation

Couple days ago when pushing the clutch pedal I would get this squeak-creak noise like plastic rubbing on plastic. This evening I looked into it closer and pulled the cable to see if anything was moving into impending failure mode. Cable looked OK and I spent some time with a can of fluid film and lubed up the cable as best I could. Still plenty of grease all around the adjuster and pedal pivot, felt around and the adjuster teeth on both pieces felt fine. Put everything back together (including the over the top cable guide clip!) and after some fidgeting and figured out the cable end was not fully seated on the transmission.

Noise appears to be gone and wtf happend to my clutch pedal ? In an unscientific before and after I could swear the pedal depress effort has gone down by 1/3-1/2 ? Assuming nothing decides to snap and break tomorrow on the way in I may make this a regular maintenance thing, like every other oil change pull the cable and spray some lubricant down it.

Very interesting...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 135sohc

Couple days ago when pushing the clutch pedal I would get this squeak-creak noise like plastic rubbing on plastic. This evening I looked into it closer and pulled the cable to see if anything was moving into impending failure mode. Cable looked OK and I spent some time with a can of fluid film and lubed up the cable as best I could. Still plenty of grease all around the adjuster and pedal pivot, felt around and the adjuster teeth on both pieces felt fine. Put everything back together (including the over the top cable guide clip!) and after some fidgeting and figured out the cable end was not fully seated on the transmission.

Noise appears to be gone and wtf happend to my clutch pedal ? In an unscientific before and after I could swear the pedal depress effort has gone down by 1/3-1/2 ? Assuming nothing decides to snap and break tomorrow on the way in I may make this a regular maintenance thing, like every other oil change pull the cable and spray some lubricant down it.

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I think I will give that a try on mine. Its not overly stiff but any reduction in pedal pressure is good for me old clutch leg.

"after some fidgeting and figured out the cable end was not fully seated on the transmission."

this would increase the cable sheath length slightly - that might have made the inner cable bind somewhat in the sheathing

I'll note as many are unaware:
I believe all models of our cars have at least two different clutch cables (early/late -early/mid/late)
some may have three

there are at least two cable mount brackets that mount to the strut tower
one is squarish and one is more rectangular

these two different brackets use a different retainer clip position on the sheathing
thus there is a cable to be used specifically with each bracket
- as the distance from the clip at the strut and the tab on the trans case changes
-so the mounting point distance on the sheathing changes

this IS why some auto parts supplier clutch cables never fit
solution , collect both style brackets for your car
then you have the right one no matter what the parts guy hands you

maybe

I believe I read also the arm changed on the 523/568 cars and that again they use another unique to them cable also - I have no idea if the bracket also changed again

Oh yes.. There are MANY different clutch cable/tower bracket/lever arm configurations. One of those little 'gotchas' that some through pure luck never experience and others seem to strip and break the adjusters because they are pre-loading the living #$%^ out of everything and add in the big heavy clutch PP and well.. things go snap eventually.

IIRC early 1992 was the final revision using the longest cable because the clutch arm clock position went lower on everything whether TBI, 3.0 or T3. This cable I have now is OEM and pure luck that I got it, the aftermarket cables are crap. I ordered several of them awhile back from RA to compare lengths. Even the cables that were supposed to be the 'same' varied by easily .250 or more :eek: