The issue we have is all of a sudden the clutch pedal goes to the floor with no effort. I find that the clutch lever can be easily moved back and forth by hand. so we drop the engine and lift it off the cradle to inspect the clutch etc. Everything looks fine. I was expecting to find damaged fork or pressure plate. The only thing that looks odd is the pressure plate springs do not look like the extend out very far from the pressure plate. So we start to loosen the pressure plate bolts slowly and the springs start to extend out more to where I would expect them. The thrust bearing looks good and fork is in good condition. Anybody have any ideas what might cause this or what I should look for?


A little history: the car is an 84 manual 4 speed all stock. It was purchased last spring and the PO said he had just put a new clutch in. The clutch and pressure plate do look like new. The car has been driven very little since we purchased it because we have been restoring it.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Georelle

Did this change happen overnight? The clutch disk is taking up more space than it used to, so it may be the wrong one, or something (a spring?) is sticking out of it wrong.

[This message has been edited by Gall757 (edited 11-23-2014).]

It changed suddenly.

Looking at things over again I think the clutch and pressure plate are fine. The care has the original clutch lever in place and it looks like it has cracked as they have been know to do. I am now thinking when this failed it allowed the clutch pedal to fully depress and the slave rod to fully extend without disengaging the trans.

However I did seem to be able to move clutch lever back and forth quite a lot before I separated the motor and trans. So maybe a better question now is how much play should there be in the clutch lever? If I put it back together, with a new clutch lever of course, how much should the lever move back and forth?

If you are asking 'how much should the lever move with only hand pressure?' the answer is 0...no movement. The slave push rod should move it about 1".

Should there be no movement even when the slave rod is not connected to the clutch arm?

Did you confirm the correct operation of the hydraulics before dropping the engine?

Yes, hydraulics were ok. I wanted to pull engine to do some work any way so that's no big deal. It would be nice to know how much it should move but I think the problem is the clutch lever.