This long off the road 86 I bought and have been bringing back to life, the clutch pedal is a couple inches higher than the brake pedal.
The travel is of course overlong long, and it grabs fairly high up.
I can't speak to the condition of the clutch other than to say it does not slip or shudder or such.
The master and slave look to have been replaced fairly recently.
The master cylinder spacer is present and looks like all the ones I see on google.
Clutch pedal action is tight and smooth, the throw is just eight miles long and is rather
unpleasant. I see there is not official adjustment available, I don't see any
evidence of air in the system by normal standards.

Thoughts?

 

How long is long ?
The manual says 7 3/8” travel for clutch pedal.
Without going out to my car and looking, I recall the clutch pedal being higher than brake pedal.

 

Total travel, coarse measurement is 7.something inches. It's an inch and a half higher than the brake pedal, if you take the play out of it with gentle pressure that shrinks to about 3/4 of an inch.


Today, much to my continued chagrin with this car, I removed the clutch pedal after observing what I thought was lack of a bushings between the pin on the clutch arm and the
rod to the clutch master cylinder is in fact the pin on the clutch arm being eaten away since some genius decided metal on metal there was a fine idea.
I'm going to weld it up and take care of that bit of slop at least.

Another part of it I notice is there is a lot of play in the rod going into the clutch master cylinder,
it's retained with a washer under a snap ring and moves freely in that space pretty well, not sure if this is a feature of this particular example or if that is normal?

I'm still not sure that will account for all the height, almost eight inches of stroke seems like a lot. I haven't pulled the slave off to eyeball that end of things yet but I will.
That and the master appear to be relatively new. I am tempted to cut and thread the master rod and make it adjustable just in case.

 

My clutch pedal is at least 1 1/2” higher than brake pedal.

 

That sucks a bunch if it's normal. This clutch feels like the 60's grain trucks I drove as a kid.

 

Good time to practice clutchless shifting. 😜

Been driving mine for 23 years, never bothered me or crossed my mind.
I did add short throw shifter linkages though.
The shorter throw is nice.

 

These are not great transmissions in terms of driving quality, they shift more like tractors than sports cars.

 

I just replaced the clutch assembly in 85 model. The clutch pedal does sit higher than the brake and it seems to engage high off the floor. I got the car with engine removed so I don't know if it was always that way. Drove it for the first time yesterday and seemed to work properly, Transmission shifts smooth so I figure I'll let it ride. Not sure if it matters but I installed a McLead clutch in mine.

 

That about sums it up. I don't know the state of the clutch itself in this car and I've repaired the worn pin on the arm and will replace the master and slave and
see how it is. That and the shifter kinda crap on the driving experience a fair bit thus far. Maybe it'll be better-enough.

 

Ooooo K. For posterity:

The clutch pedal is still high over the brake, I haven't re-measured it since all the work was done but it looks
about the same, between 3/4 and 1.5" This is 1: dumb, and 2: just how GM wanted it apparently.

I have R&R'd the clutch pedal and bracket and would not wish that job on my worst enemy.
Since GM didn't put a bushing on the post that the rod from the clutch master attaches to the clutch arm on
it wore it about halfway through, which was part of where the slop in the pedal was from. I welded it up and
massaged it back into shape (pretty much 0.50 round). If I were more dedicated I'd have added a replaceable
bushings of Delrin or UHMW or bronze or something.


The clutch arm pivot bushings were a bit worn at 156K, and the bolt/nut that attaches it to the bracket was not as tight as it could have
been between wear of those bushings and just bending with age I imagine. The annoying part is you really need to tighten that
bolt to it's happy place, not too tight, not too loose, with it in the car. It's doable but annoying. When it's all snug with fresh bushings
there is practically zero side to side motion at the pedal pad, just the wee-est of bit, and the pedal action itself is dead smooth.

There is also practically zero play at the pedal with a fresh and in good order clutch master cylinder, the only perceptible play is the
necessary slop in the fit of the CM ring on the post on the clutch pedal. Mine likely has less than most but it's the only place there's
any movement and I can't see how it would be any different unless something was worn.
The CM I pulled out, which I've no doubt was some Chinese POS, there was damn near a quarter inch of play between it's rod
to the pedal and the piston in the CM, the washer they put in behind the snap ring to keep that rod in the master was worn
concave, or convex depending on how you look at it. It was not a robust setup, and I wonder if side stepping the clutch to
get it to bleed as is often suggested might have something to do with it since there is no stop on the clutch pedal arm at either end of it's
motion. At any rate the new LUK has no play there so far, so there's no play in the clutch pedal.

Moving further down the line, whoever was in here last put a gob of weld in the clutch slave pushrod contact point on the release arm
and the point of the pushrod had dug into said weld and made it's own little spot to live just inboard of what would have been the
correct original stock position in the cone. I'm also not sure the pushrod in there is stock, it measured slightly larger around and
a few ten thou longer than what I see quoted for the new ones online. I ground out the weld in the release arm, which was an utter
joy with a carbide bit up over my head, and got it into a nice cup shape rather than a cone(best I could manage in place) dressed the point on the pushrod to a nice 9mm FMJ shape and
greased it all up and it seems happy.

Bleeding this POS.... I'll throw my .02c in here since based on the eight zillion results in google when you look it up people have problems with
it.


It is self bleeding, and self adjusting (which I'll get to later) but you have to get it somewhat bled for it to finish self bleeding.
I bench bled the master cylinder just like you'd do with a brake master then capped it off and installed it.
I filled the slave on the bench somewhat full but not all the way since the piston has to be compressed about 3/4 of the
way with it installed, I just didn't want it empty.

I tried reverse pressure bleeding with what I had on hand (motive power bleeder) but the path of least resistance for fluid
is out around the threads of the bleeder rather than going up the pipe to the master cylinder, so after cleaning up that
mess I installed the thing and found I had an adaptor in my kit (38mm Euro screw on brake master adaptor I believe)
that fit the LUK master reservoir and put 5psi on it and bled it from the bleeder just like normal, got a ton of air out, ran
maybe a CM reservoir and a half worth of fluid through it while not letting it run dry, and then it had pedal, about
30 pumps later it felt just like it still feels today. Done. Really wasn't much to it. I think having the master bled, some fluid in
the slave, and some pressure to push the air down through the pipe with a solid slug of fluid behind it made it
as easy as it was. I can absolutely see how people could have problems doing this if they haven't done such
before. This way worked in my case without any real drama.

On the self adjusting bit, part of the whole source of this project was the clutch grabs really high.
The almost 8 inches of travel they have on this pedal is silly and uncomfortable to start with, but having
it grab in the last quarter of it's upper travel is really lame. And there's nothing readily done about it.
Changing the slave pushrod length isn't going to do anything because the system is self adjusting and it'll just take
up the slack you give or remove one direction or another and move the exact same amount as it always does when
the pedal is pressed. If you could make the master pushrod adjustable you might get some change in operation,
and if you change the piston size of either of the cylinders that would change things, or the flywheel/disk thickness.
I see a lot of post from people that say they replace clutches and the things still grab high, maybe that's just how they
are, but it sucks. I've got to pull these trans for leak repair at some point so I'm going to just leave it be for now, if
a new clutch and such does not make it feel a little better I'll revisit changing things.

I have pondered putting in a pedal stop since the thing does not need but maybe 3/4 of it's total travel and it's
all at the top, I've got to ponder and experiment. I've put upper and lower stops in on cars before, with cable clutches that were adjustable,
withe very positive results but I'm not sure yet it's a viable thing here. We'll see.


Anyway, that's that for now on the clutch pedal and hydraulics.
Oh the LUK master and slave were made in Taiwan.
They'll last as long as they last, I'd flush the fluid in them yearly, doubt the
cap can keep air out and the allum bores will erode in use. They were cheap though.

 

There is a spacer that goes between the clutch master and the firewall. If that is missing your clutch pedal will be too high.

 

Not missing.

 

I very scientifically put a block of wood under the clutch pedal this evening and it was bordering on transformative for the general use of the car.
A 2x4, which isn't 2x4 because we live in a crazy world, was a hair too much for my liking (but still shifted fine) so I cut a quarter inch or soo off it
and it's a damn large improvement and the transmission seems completely content with the pedal being depressed that far.
I'll come up with something more elegant after a few more drives.

If you have a high grabbing pedal, and you can shift at will into any gear with the clutch an inch or so off the floor, throw
a piece of wood under there and see how it feels. I have NO idea what GM was thinking with almost eight inches
of pedal travel on something with any sort of sporting intentions.