Okay, I've got an emergency request for help! My girlfriend is visiting
from Norway and really loves driving around in the TR6. I thought
everything was going swell with the car until a couple of days ago, when I
noticed that the clutch pedal was feeling a wee bit mushy. Being the
eternal optimist that I am, I just thought that I must be imagining things
as nothing could go wrong with my TR6 (except for burning out alternators,
blowing head gaskets, replacing wiring harnesses, etc.).
Finally, yesterday I had a total failure of some part of the clutch system.
I was driving to work and at a red light the car refused to go back into
1st. I got the car to the sid of the road and looked in the master cylinder
reservoir. It was nearly drained, but still about 1/8 of the way full (this
is a new occurrance for me, in the past year I've never seen the level in
the res change). I thought that was kind of odd, but I refilled the res
(with a handy supply of brake fluid), pumped the pedal a few times, and
everything seemed to be working again... Until I tried driving home from
work. After starting the engine, no amount of pedal pumping would convince
the thing to go into gear, and I had to have a friend of mine tow me back
home.
At the house I looked at the linkage between the slave cylinder and the
clutch cross shaft lever. The linkage was attached to the upper-most hole,
and had been pushed out far enough to force the rubber boot off of the slave
cylinder. Grasping the clutch cross shaft lever by hand I could easily turn
it enough to produce 5/8 to 1" of travel from the slave cylinder. I could
use the lever to push the piston all the way back into the slave cylinder,
then the spring in the cylinder would have more than enough force to rotate
the lever back. Being the stupid eternal optimist I thought the problem was
a worn taper pin and immediately removed the transmission without bleeding
the hydraulics (DOH!). Needless to say, the throw-out fork is firmly
attached to the cross shaft. The throw-out bearing does seem to exhibit
quite a bit of play, especially compared to a new one.
Any suggestions of what I should look for while the tranny is off, or should
I put it back on and try rebleeding the hydraulics?
Thanks!
Jason Sherlock
'74.5 TR6
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