clutch hydraulics with the racing beat clutch
 

I have the Racing Beat street clutch. Sometimes when I shift gears, mainly through 3rd, i can feel a little gear "clashing". My foot is mashed to the floor with the clutch. Suspecting a hydraulics problem, I replaced the master cylinder (slave is few months old) and bled the system. No real difference, still get the hard shifting...

The clutch lets out right off of the floor, so I decided to mess with the clutch pedal adjustment by adjusting the pushrod down by the pedal (damn what a backbreaker man.) Now if I adjust it so that the pushrod is pushing the cylinder a bit farther in while the pedal is at rest, I can get a little more force in the pedal (ie it pushes back harder) and the clutch lets out farther off of the floor. I am afraid however, if I push the rod in too far that I will be sort of "pre-stressing" the slave and clutch fork and essentially creating the effect of riding the clutch. So I had a friend look at the slave and see how far I could move the pushrod in before the slave actuated...a bit but not really enough.

So, do you guys think I can adjust the push rod a bit more, putting a bit of "pre-stress" on the clutch fork to get it closer to engaging without engaging? Basically just looking for similar experience with this problem in case any of ya'll have dealt with it before.

Right on

How old is your disk? If it's still pretty new then it'll have plenty of meat on it which means it's thick enough to want to keep spinning at the flywheel and p plate speed instead of at the tranny's speed. Know what I mean? I say that because my 225mm disk is getting really thin (its closeness to the rivets worried me a bit back when I was doing a tranny swap, but had no money left to get a new one, plus it was still running fine, so keeping it in service was easily justified) and never gives me any clashing.

The 'pre-stress' probably won't do anything because the '74 and later slave cylinders are all self adjusting. Just adjust the pedal to what feels good and keep an eye on the 'clashing'.

Have you tried a quaility gear oil?

I have had problems in the past that went away with some good synthetic in the gearbox.

Get some redline or amsoil or mobil 1 and see what its like.

Just my $.02:D

This disk and pressure plate are only a few months old. though I am not exactly sure what you mean abuot the disk wanted to spin at the flywheel speed because of this, I'll take your word for it. I beleve there is redline oil in the tranny.

Right on

As a last ditch fix, you could slot the holes on the slave cylinder so that the slack is taken out right there. With the pedal rod adjustments you've made, you should get more stroke from your slave cylinder actually doing work on the release arm...:cool:

I wouldn't do that.... Some/many aftermarket clutches are designed to have a light pedal feel by lengthening the stroke that you need to push the clutch. (Who wants a light pedal feel? If you want that, you're in the wrong car) What you need to do is re-adjust the clutch pedal's top-out stop upward, and then similarly adjust the clutch pedal pushrod. When the pushrod is properly adjusted there is a SLIGHT amount of slop when you touch the pedal, before the piston in the master cylinder moves.

Basically what you are doing is lengthening the stroke available to you. You can't make the floor lower, so you have to make the clutch pedal start out higher.

Sounds good, but I've tried that and the stop appears to be adjusted to the max. I'll check again to verify. I don't have much "slop" in the pedal now, as the pushrod is right on the master piston's ass. It may even be pushing it slightly, though not enough to move the slave. I talked to my mazda dude today and he said that he compared an aftermarket slave cylinder to a stock slave clylinder and the aftermarket seems to have a bit deeper hole where the pushrod sits. Effectively making the pushrod shorter for less throw on the fork.

So what causes the pedal to spring back? Is it the force of the hydraulic pressure or the force of the clutch spring force pressing on the fork?

Thanks for the help guys....I'll keep troubleshooting, let you know what happens.

Right on