Hey all, thanks again for the help with my Dad's 5.0. My gf loves Mustangs as well as my family, but she was stuck with a crappy 95 Buick Century for a long time. This past week I found her a car, and she went for it. A 88 lx 5.0 with 5-speed. Unfortunatly she can not drive a stick yet, but starting next week we will work on that.

The car is is great condition, has a gt-40 intake on it, and equal lenght hooker headers, and turboflow catback. Other than that it is stock as the day it was made.

O yeah, and there is the clutch. The previous owner claimed he put in a Ford racing clutch and adjustable clutch cable set up. Well, the clutch is stiff, and gets progressivly stiffer the further down you press. Also the clutch starts to engage as soon as your foot moves off the floor, but won't lock up until about midstroke. This makes shift timeing kind of different, and it feels like I slip the cluthc too much just normally driveing. I went to adjust the clutch cable only to find no firewall adjustment, a cable adjustment, but realized the cable was already too tight to tighten anymore. I checked out the pedal setup to find that there is no quadrent. THis suprised me a lot, every stang I've seen has a quadrent by the pedal, this one has the cable directly attached to the pedal. All of the adjustable cabel setups I see for the car online show a quadrent as part of it.

The car drives ok, but I would like to adjust the clutch so it feels a bit more normal for my gf to learn on, also once the clutch wears a lil, I can't see how I can adjust for it since it takes the WHOLE pedal stroke to disengage the clutch right now.

So my quetion is, is my car suposed to not have a quadrent piece? Could I put one in to get more leverage and make the stroke easier? And, could my clutch be going bad and that's why it takes until half stroke to fully engate, or is that just because of the small amount of pressure plate movement that must be happenly by not haveing the extra leverage of the quadrent?

Thank you for any advice you can give, I apologise for the lenght of the post, but I like to give as many details as possible to aid your advice.

 

there has to be a quadrant, that is what the cable hooks to, with out it there is nothing to pull the cable. unless the other guy made something. if there really isn't one there buy one and put it in and if you use a firewall adjuster then i would reinforce the firewall around the opening with a steel plate, cause without the rubber from the cable there is nothing to absorb the force and movement except the firewall. I had the adjuster and had problems with the clutch cable grinding and sticking. then i found out the wall was bending so i put a steel plate on and threw the P.O.S. adjuster in the trash where it should be, and made adjustments at the fork.

 

yeah there has to be a quadrant if you buy on dont buy the stock one it will just brake cuz its plastic i broke mine like 3times and the clutch well all mustangs have a stiff clutch

 

ide check the cable routing. should go between the motor mount and the kmember. the king cobra is a very stock feeling clutch. where the motor sports HD is very stiff. sounds like you may have the latter. or a binding cable. the clutch pedal goes to a rod, that rod goes to a plastic piece on the gas pedal side of the floor board. make sure you know where your looking.

post pics!

 

Thats strange but sounds like a rig. Check on the tranny where the fork is to see if its adjustible there. You should see a rubber boot,under that is where the fork is.

 

should be a metal cover that is held on with a 8 or 10 mm nut, im pretty sure he said he checked there though.

 

I checked the slutch fork end a while ago, it is adjustable and normal.

I found the quadrent, it just is a really wierd one. I admit I am not tiny so it is kind of hard for me to get under there. The quadrent that is on it is a rough feeling metal, and has a kind of travle stop in the form of a metal plate blocking most of it from any sort of view. By feeling it, I've figured out that the attatchment piont is normal, there is only one place to hook the cable, and the quadrent feels signifigantly shorter and steeper than the steeda one on my Cobra.

After finding this, and talking ot my father, who very recently drove the car for the first time, we think the problem might not me the cable, but maybe the cluthc fork or pressure plate is broken. This would explain why the throw out bearing is bad.

The when cold the clutch starts to engage once your foot moves off the floor, and locks up by about 1/3 of the way up. Once the car/cluthc get hot, then it starts to engage at about 1.5 - 2 inches off the floor and won't lock up until at least half way up.

According to my father this could be because either the clutch fork or the pressure plate are cracked and one side of the clutch is engageing before the other, which in turn makes the engage piont inconsistant and destroys the throwout bearing.

At school, 2 of my teachers (one a Ford SVT tech) felt the pedal and gave advise, both siad it could just be out of adjustment, but the clutch is VERY stiff. One (the Ford guy) said the pressure plate might be cracked. ( he said this a week before my Dad did, and I had not mentioned this idea to my Dad)

Also I took my first drive in the Cobra in a while, and that clutch pedal used to feel stiff, ( not bad for me, but others were amazed), and it felt light as hell, like there was nothing attached compared to my girl's new car. This made me realize that the pedal is WAY too stiff in her car, the clutch does not lock up very well, so I know it is not some heavy duty thing, it should be MUCH easier on your leg.

My father suggested pulling the tranny and takeing a direct look as the next step, I agree with him, but it is gunna be a lil while before I can do that, (no place to do it).

O well, I guess the worst case senario, I have to throw a new clutch in it, (King Cobra seems decent and cheap), which is no biggy cause I need to change the throwout bearing regardless. If it gets a new clutch it means I will have to drive her car every day for a while till the clutch breaks in, can't have her learning stick on a new clutch.

Thanks for the suggestions/info, I will keep ya posted.

 

It may be that the clutch cable is stretched out. I would buy a cable and try that as its cheap and easy to replace. The only other thing besides what you have mentioned is the throughout bearing retainer. Its where the bearing rides on, over time it becomes worn out and binds. I had this issue on my SVO http://www.mustangandfords.com/howto...t_enhancement/