dfinnegan

I've recently begun to hear a strange noise when depressing the clutch pedal immediately after a cold start. Once I've driven off the noise goes away and I can't make it come back again.

I heard it maybe a week or so ago when moving the car into the garage. Alarmed, I popped the engine lid, jumped out and could find no source or further sound.

Today I discovered it occurs when I depress the clutch pedal all the way to the floor. Slightly back and it goes away.

It's a medium loud tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat type sound. Kind of like a card in bicycle spoke type sound.

Definitely with clutch pedal to the floor. Goes away again when I lift up slightly.

I drove the car. Clutch seems fine. It's not slipping. Smooth shifts. Very smooth, in fact. I'm very aware of the shifting as I've had stiff shifting problems this past winter. I suspected a rusty spline as I had exhausted most other possibilities.

At any rate, I'm very concerned about this noise.

Any ideas?

Cracked pressure plate?
Broken finger on pressure plate?

Sounds like some kind of interference.

The clutch was replaced 28k miles back and received new clutch kit, release bearing, pilot bearing, guide tube and slave cylinder hyd hose.

Looking for ideas and trouble shooting techniques . . .

Thanks,
Dave

Indycam

Does the clutch pedal have an adjustable stop ?

dfinnegan

Yes, it does.

Question: if it is mis-adjusted would that cause some sort of interference?

Is this possibly just an adjustment? No harm, no foul?

(please, make my day!!)

Indycam

If the travel inside the bell housing is to great because the pedal does to good a job ...
Adjust the stop so that there is no clutch drag when the petal is all the way down .
Where in the pedal travel does the clutch start to grab ?

dfinnegan

A bit up from the floor . . . an inch? more? . . . I'll have to check

Come to think of it, I did adjust the stop so that I got a bit more travel from the pedal when I was trying to determine the clutch grab/stiff shifting issue back in November. Manual calls for 145mm of clutch pedal travel. I was only getting 135mm. Adjusted the floor stop to allow for 145mm.

Guess I'll be adjusting that back!

Just so I'm clear, the slave cylinder applies pressure to the release fork which levers the pressure plate back via the release bearing. And the fork can possibly be pushed far enough to make contact with the pressure plate? Is that the hypothesis?

Indycam

Hypothesis ?
My shot in the dark ,
is just a shot in the dark .

Something may be making noise cause somethings touching something else .

Rocket Rob

My theory is that you need to adjust the pedal stop. Perhaps yours is loose and its moved, creating excessive travel. One time I was testing a shifting problem and I removed the floor board completely, when pressing the clutch, if you went too far, I would get a tat tat tat noise.

Indycam

Any news ?

dfinnegan

I have verified that the noise is caused by excessive pedal travel.

I have not had time to re-adjust the stop, but have adjusted my use model and no longer get any noise. I will adjust the pedal stop as soon as I am able.

Thanks for the input.

dfinnegan

Well, this issue never really did go away, but I believe that it has now been solved.

I've had, yet another, clutch installed. This time with a new pressure plate. I'm told that the pressure plate, which is supposed to be dish shaped, was nearly flat. That was causing the fork to make contact with the fingers of the pressure plate.

It seems that despite clutch changes at 23k, 27k (both previous owner), 55k and now at 84k, that the pressure plate was never changed.

The clutch is now very smooth, silent, and never causes difficulty getting into low gears (1 & 2) despite operating temperature.

I'm hopeful that the problem has finally been found, and corrected, and that I can look forward to many motoring miles before needing another clutch!


Cheers,
Dave