love Californians (clutch story)

[Arde]

My clutch pedal went completely soft after shifting into 2nd gear yesterday during evening rush around Great America Park. I put the hazard blinkers on and started a serpentine drive going into parking lots and side streets whenever I saw red lights only to come back and try them later. It felt great to get finally to get into 101 even though I did 20 minutes of highway in 2nd gear. Made it to the shop without any angry honks or gestures from other drivers. Gotta love them cool Californians.

I didn't see any posts on the clutch hydraulics giving up, will take a look today and do the post mortem, but the clutch always felt kind of hard and maybe that took a toll in the end.

 

[racerxx]

Just a Thought

Occam's razor: The simplest explanation is usually the most likely.

Did you check the fluid?

Remember Carl in Sling Blade, "It ain't got no gas in it".

 

[Philip Slate]

Had the same thing happened to you in Southern CA, your coupe would have been just so much road kill by now, laying by the side of the road, squished by any number of 18 wheelers. And the number of one finger salutes you would have received would have been sufficient to darken the sun on even the brightest of days.

 

[Arde]

Hydraulics were fine, the clutch rod came lose and its parts fell onto the kickboard. I need to figure out if I can fix that with the E9 tool kit next time. The tool kit looks great but it never did anything for me.

The fellow drivers were great, they understood I wanted >100 feet of headroom in front of me and few filled that gap.

 

[jmackro]

You mean the rod that connects the pedal to the clutch master? For some odd reason, those things tend to snap. I've broken two of them in the 19 years I've owned my coupe. The second time it broke, my mechanic fabricated one out of a bolt, some bar stock, plus some welding. He said: "well, that should work until you can get a factory part". I said "the heck with the #*&^% factory part - I'm just going to use the one you made forever".

 

[Arde]

That rod, but it didn't break, just threads got loose and undone. Using loctite this time.

 

[Mark B]

Bay Area Generalization

You can tell the out-of-towners or transplants by the people who honk their horns.