Shortly after the installation of my ACT 2600, I began having trouble shifting. It wasn't bad at first, but progressively got worse and worse until I could barely shift at all... Waiting as long as I did to fix the problem was a DUMB move in hindsight, buuuuuuut I digress...
After replacing the clutch master, then the slave, installing the lengthened rod, bleeding the piss out of all that, still shifted like crap. My pedal had a ridiculous amount of play in it.... Probably more than 50% travel before it even picked up at all. So I did a lil research and found that more than likely my pedal assy. was to blame. One Saturday afternoon my father (read ace mechanic) and I decided to pull her out and get this crap taken care of. Now I'm not going to get into the pedal removal.. Suffice it to say that taking that MFer out is NOT fun. I read several different techniques, but honestly the easiest way we found to get it out was to remove the brake booster, remove the brake master cyl, remove the steering column, and the pull it right out. It was STILL a pita even with all that removed, but that made it a lil easier. That's all I'm going into about the pedal removal...
So, what happened when you get the pedal assy out? Well here it is. Just looking at it makes my knuckles ache...
So you've gotten it out, and now lets see the damage... After you take the lever off of the "square peg" make sure it's not rounded out, that part of the pedal gets welded over, but be sure to tell whomever is welding the nut on there to pre-load the pedal assy, and to be careful NOT to melt the plastic bushing underneath. These welds *look* like ass, but they're that way because he didn't want to melt that bushing... Oh, and as a side-note, when I took this lever off the square peg, it was hardly rounded at all. Matter of fact it looked PERFECT! CRAP! What could be causing all this slop?!? *more*
Here is a pic of where the bottom of the lever meets the clutch master cyl. the lil brass or whatever clamp is still on there, but when you remove it, there is the dowel pin, and a bushing.... Well at least there might be. I had a SEVERELY worn dowel pin, and NO plastic bushing... Soooooo I guess we know where the slop came from...
Oh, what's this???? Geez..... Now the hole has a nice crater dug out of it, and that is one of the spots that the nice taboo bushings go.... Er, assuming you can get the parts from him... Yeah right. Looks like we're making our own.
My dowel pin was SCREWED, and I didn't have time to order one from my local ripoff artists aka Mitsu dealer... Soooooooooo I bought a 3/8ths inch grade 8 bolt from my local hardware store, and 2 thin nuts (two so you can use one to lock the other)
Aah, now we're gettin' the picture...
This is kinda the tricky part... I had to make a bushing and couldn't find anything to go in there! I actually bought a piece of iron pipe, and was originally going to slip the bolt through that, and then slip that through the oblong hole in the lever, buuuuuut as luck had it, my friend had this lil part left over from installing a civic short shifter... It's a lil zinc-plated steel bushing about 2 or so inches long. It aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalmost fit right perfect into the oblong hole in the lever, but it needed to be bored out in the center so the 3/8ths inch bolt could go through it. Enter.... The 3/8ths inch drill bit! I just took a drill and bored out the center of the civic shifter bushing, and then cut the bushing short so it would fit into the oblong lever hole. Oh, and the oblong hole had to be dremeled juuuuuuuust slightly so it could fit in.
Ah, here's the magic piece that makes your shifting buttery smooth again :D
Here's the grade 8 bolt with the make-shift bushing.
We figurin' this out yet?
How about now? There is the bushing installed... If you want I suppose you could weld that, or whatever...
You'll have to cut the grade 8 bolt so she'll clear on both sides of the lever...
Here she is installed without the nuts on yet to keep her in place.
Another view.
Now, install, and shift away, I personally drained my tranny (and found lots of nice tranny grindings in there... mmmmmmm) and put some fresh penzoil synchromesh, W O R K E D W O N D E R S. Can't say enough, though it could also be in part to the new bushing system. Whatever.... I can't compare these to the 60 buck bushings, and I know this is not the BEST way to address this problem probably, but it has worked VERY well for me thus far. I have 6k ACT2600 miles on her now, and it's still as good as when I installed it. I got under there the other day to check it out, and there's no wear/tear or anything so yay. Hope this helps you guys out... Took forever to write :talon:
