kkswow12

is this a mod i can do on my 997.1? would love more feel to the clutch, it is late or i would go look now, but hopefully there will be good news here soon, cheers, kk

Capt. Obvious

This sounds weird, but I used my head to hold the pedal down. LOL

It hurts a little bit, but it worked.

BAD.TAG

Did this over the holiday week. Was able to hold the pedal with hand.

Feel is much more natural compared to before. Using the Home Depot spring, its not that much of an increase in effort.

A worth while mod IMO

REDTURBO

Hello Everyone,

So I took out the clutch Spring today because like all of you, I felt the clutch was very unpredictable in 1st gear, all other gears felt fine but in 1st it felt like a hit and miss when trying to find the release point.
So it feels much heavier now but the clutch release point is much more accurate.
Unfortunately my father likes to drive the car and I have a feeling he's going to complain about the heavy clutch feel. So I ran to my local home depot to pick up the springs for those that have put on the lesser restricted springs. I live in Ontario Canada and sure enough, just like many other stuff, our canadian home depot don't supply these springs....
So I was wondering at my expense of course, if someone is willing to buy me the 4 pack and ship it to my address in Ontario and I will pay you paypal or if you happen to have an extra spring and can ship it to me, I'm more than willing to cover the shipping cost and a little extra for your convenience.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You,

Robert M.

Coloradocurt

Great thread - gotta keep it going!
A year ago I bought a 2007 Cayman S and became quite disenchanted by the lack of engagement feel at the clutch pedal. That's what got me searching and finding this thread. And props to everyone who has contributed in a meaningful way to the discussion.
Just yesterday a 2003 996 I had bought was delivered from back east. To my great surprise, I'm finding that the clutch pedal is VERY heavy/stiff - order-of-magnitude, twice the effort my Cayman requires. As I recall in reading through all 25 pages of this thread, there have been several posters who said that in seeking a more friendly-feeling clutch pedal, when they removed the spring they were surprised to find that it can out in pieces, i.e., it had broken.
For any of you guys who have experienced this, does my heavy-effort clutch pedal seem symptomatic of what you found?
Thanks,
Cororadocurt

sjg1138

I have a Very heavy clutch. Of course I removed the "helper" spring entirely. Have you looked under the dash to see if you have a spring in there at all?

Coloradocurt

I haven't looked yet for my 996's spring, but my sense of it from my reading is that those who removed the spring noticed a "somewhat increase" in the pedal effort. I dare say that this 996's pedal effort as nearly twice what my Cayman's is. I've drive standard shift, performance-oriented cars for over a half century, and this is far-and-away the stiffest clutch.
So back to my original question: do any of you who found your spring to have been broken recall an extremely heavy clutch pedal effort prior to that discovery.

jasper

I'm one of the guys whose spring came out in pieces. I also had my clutch fail last year

The two scenarios felt very similar, so it could be either (or both) issues that are making your clutch stiff. In my case it was the spring plate that failed not the friction plate. This is pretty common I think and tends to occur around 80,000 miles if the car hasn't been "lady driven". You don't say what miles are on your car, but its a reference point.

I should note that after I changed my clutch (to a sport clutch no less) the pedal was light as a feather. Just the way I like it. I don't quite inderstand the clutch spring "debate". I've had 40 cars, all of them manual and the 996 clutch with helper spring feels just great to me. Conversely. It felt heavy and numb when the spring was broken.

Coloradocurt

Thanks. That's the sort of feedback I'm looking for. Unfortunately, I have almost zero information about the 4 previous owners (all in the Southeast). One hint I have is that "someone" installed a K&N intake - so that's a sign of an "enthusiast" but no reading on expertise with a clutch.
From CarFax, this vehicle sold new 11 years ago to the month, and now has about 76K miles. The four registered private-party owners, and from purchase to trade-in account for 8 yrs/0 Mo. and 68.7K miles.
Of the difference of 3 years and 8K miles as of now (including a thousand mile road trip by the dealer selling it to me) appears to have the last 2 yrs/1 Mo. spent bouncing around Florida from one dealer to another (including the most recent 8 months since bought at auction by the Kentucky dealer). The other 11 months seems to have been time spent between trade-in and resale.
In terms of length of ownership in yrs/Mo.-
1st owner, 3 yrs/4Mo
2nd owner, 1yr/6Mo
3rd owner, 2yrs/1Mo
4th owner, 2yrs/1Mo
So for me, the 5th owner, it's an over/under question: do I keep it longer than #1, or sell it quicker than #2? Now the challenge is to find and "fix" whatever was causing it to be such a orphan for so long. And I'm suspicious that this clutch issue may have been an underlying factor behind all of this short-ownership history. I'll start by looking into the spring issue (and when I say "heavy" what comes to mind is "dump-truck heavy." If that doesn't resolve the problem, dropping the tranny will be the next move. I'm planning to have the car up on jackstands for the next couple of months anyway, and if the tranny gets dropped, the IMS "fix" will be a must-do item.
Jasper, can you provide more specific info on the sport clutch you installed (brand, part number, etc.)?

BAD.TAG

RED - were you able to source a spring yet ?

jasper

Hello Colorado;

I installed the sport clutch because of circumstance, not necessarily by choice. I installed a liteweight flywheel you see, and that required me to buy a spring centred clutch disc. This in turn meant that I had to buy a pressure plate separately instead of as part of a normal clutch kit. Since the sport clutch was about the same price as a stock clutch I figured what the hell.

The flywheel was an AASCO. I bought this off of a Rennlister.

The spring centred clutch disc was SACHS part 88-1861-999-856-M410. The pressure plate is SACHS part 88-3082-999-754-M410. All are available from Pelican. These parts plus the throwout bearing were about $1200.

If I had stuck with the stock dual mass flywheel I would have just bought a stock clutch kit from Pelican for only $700.

For street and occasional track use the stock clutch would be more than adequate.

By the way - from your description of the car and the mileage - my guess is you need a clutch. Better replace it now before it fails on the road and while you're in there you can replace your IMSB with either a ceramic part or maybe the new LN engineering pressure fed system.

In my case, my engine was replaced in 2005 (under warranty by the PO) and the new engine had the larger Porsche updated bearing which can not be serviced from the outside so I had no choice but to leave it be.

I'm not worried - the re haven't been a lot of (or any?) failures of the big bearings documented here

Good luck with the car - I'm sure it will be fine.

petonic

Just finished after having to spend about 1.5 hours in an inverted position. I lost the little pin that goes in the spring cartridge. It's somewhere in my hollow clutch pedal, lol.

This vacuum hose approach is something that I should have just started with. It's a bitch to get the new (softer spring) cartridge back in. Not worth it, and I'm not sure I'd like it even with the reduced assistance. I like it just perfectly with no assistance.

Thanks for the tip! Now I don't feel as if the 90 minutes I spent inverted was for naught. I've got my CC back (I think).

sjg1138

I know this is an old thread... but my 996 is relatively new to me. I removed the stock clutch helper spring and decided that after a few months of building muscles in my left leg, I'd put a spring back in. I bought the Home Depot spring #16084 and went to put the new spring in the spring case but the spring seems to have an Inner Diameter that is too small. Any ideas on this? This is on a '99 cabriolet if it matters. The spring just seems too small. TIA.

DK570

I noticed the same thing when I looked at the Home Depot spring in the store. I've been driving w/o a spring since about Dec, but would like to put something back in so the cruise works consistently. I found a spring that seems like it will work well at Ace. It wasn't labeled other than as a #50. Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to put it in yet.

sjg1138

Never mind. I found a post where it is mentioned that the Home Depot spring must be widened a bit to fit properly. I used some pliers and twisted the spring. Eventually it fit in the shell.