So heres whats baffling me. Sorry for the long but detailed post. Maybe someone can help!! What its doing: So I've had my 4wd 1990 Minicab for about 2 weeks now, no problems. A few nights ago, I go to start the engine. Clutch feels absolutely fine. Plenty of pressure. I turn the engine on, push down the clutch pedal, put it in 1st gear, and the pedal just stays depressed. The clutch wouldn't re-engage. So I reach down and tug on the pedal and its just limply dangling. It was depressed and then stuck like that. What I tried: So, I look under the truck and find the arm sticking out of the transmission, the one that has the clutch cable connected to it. I give it a little tap and CLUNK! it snapped right back into place. I go back and examine the pedal and its back to full pressure as normal. So clearly somewhere along the line, something is getting stuck. Eventually I discovered that, in addition to manually tapping the stuck clutch arm, if I reached down and gave the clutch pedal a good yank upwards, most of the time it would CLUNK snap back too. The weird part: It seemed like when the engine was off, the clutch would never get stuck. Even when I'd push the clutch, pop it into gear (with the engine off), let go of the pedal, it would pop right out with normal pressure and engage. Once I'd turn the engine on and put it in gear however... STUCK. Dead pedal. Then I'd tap the clutch arm, it would snap back, and the engine would stall, naturally. So, what this means, I don't know. Lastly and second weird part: The following day I'm tinkering around with it, trying to see if anything is visibly sticking. Nothing I can see. Then, it just starts behaving normally again... I drive it around the block, Its fine. Come back out a few hours later. STUCK again... My thoughts (Im a beginner to this so go easy on me if I'm way off base): Either something internal where the spring by clutch plate is is sticking? Or the maybe the cable itself? Would the transmission fluid have anything to do with it? The fact that just a light tap on the clutch arm un-sticks it and it springs right back into place makes me feel like its something minor?? Thoughts??
You have something wrong inside the bellhousing. Firstly, I was thinking the release fork might be over rotating & causing the fingers to try to overcenter but when you go down below and pop it loose, you don't seem to have any freeplay. Possibly there is a return spring inside the bell that is not hooked as it should be or is broken. You might try to adjust the cable to get some freeplay and then see what it does. Fred
First guess is that you are over entering the clutch. Adjust the cable so that you have about 1/4-inch of free play. Then see if you still have pressure at the pedal, and enough travel to disengage the clutch completely. As the disk wears, the fingers on the clutch move upward towards the throwout bearing. As the disk gets too worn down you can adjust the clutch to the point it over centers, and kind of pops over, and doesn’t want to come back. You are probably going to have to replace the clutch disk, pressure plate, spigot bearing and throwout bearing. You might get away with just the disk. But, If the disk is worn out, then everything else is also getting old. And If you value your time, it makes sense to replace everything while you are in there. It isn’t like the tranny on the these trucks is heavy, and a nightmare to move around, but even as light as it is, I wouldn’t want to pull and replace one anymore times than I had to.
It could be just the throwout bearing sticking too but, as Jigs says, if you are in there get all the parts and replace them while you have it apart. Definitely something in the bellhousing is hanging it up.
Interesting... I will look into this. I appreciate the reply. I have a service manual on the way. Can't wait to see that and get a better idea of whats going on in there. I'm brand new to kei trucks and have never done transmission work. Do you think any standard clutch specialist auto shops would work on this? So far my luck as been nothing but bad calling around my local japanese auto shops.
[UPDATE] FIXED: After removing the transmission, I discovered that the rod that connects the clutch cable arm and the clutch fork was almost totally seized up with GUNK. After thoroughly spraying the bell housing with brake cleaner, I tipped the whole thing on its side and from the outside, where the cable bracket enters the bell housing, I added several sprays of PB blaster and let it creep. I was finally able to loosen up that cable bracket to the point of being able to easily and freely actuate it by hand. The bearing looked a little gnarly as well, so I think @Jigs-n-fixtures guess that the fingers were popping over and catching on the bearing was also correct. I ended up cleaning everything out thoroughly then replacing the bearing, the clutch pad and the pressure plate. The clutch pad and pressure plate looked absolutely FINE (truck only has 36k miles), but i decided to just go ahead and replace everything anyway. Threw it all back together, tensioned the cable and PRESTO! It was functioning absolutely perfectly. Extremely smooth pedal action. Thanks everyone for the help and the confidence to try this repair myself! Had no idea how a clutch worked, now I do, and now I know how to fix them.
