Was running the usual errands... mail stuff sold on ebay, stop at Radio
Shack to get a few pushbuttons, home depot to get a 1-7/8 hole saw for my
defroster vent thing, dunkin donuts coffee so I stay awake while working.
Not a big deal, right? In heavy traffic I shifted up to 3rd, and was just
cruising along until someone switched lanes without indicating, with very
little room to spare. I push in the brake and clutch simultaniously, and
BANG the clutch pedal goes to the floor, the truck stops and of course the
engine stalls.

Shifter came out of gear, that's good. I pull the clutch pedal up with my
foot, and it stayed up. Cool. Pushed it slightly, and thwap, right to
the floor. Not cool.

Opened door, got out, and pushed truck to side of road which wasn't too
bad once I got it moving. Was a very slight downhill section of road.
Checked the clutch fluid and it was full. Now I'm in a panic thinking the
slave in the bell housing blew, or the pressure plate died, or something
catastrophic and expensive. Plus, I'd have to be towed somewhere. So I
got back into the truck to call Lyn and explain I won't be home for a
while and what happened... and as I got in I noticed some black plastic
scraps on the floor. Normally, such things are there in mass quantity
from the dash project... dremels make large piles of crap all over the
place. But today was different because last night, I shop vac'd the
interior clean so I could find screws if I dropped them, while working on
the dash.

Anyway, this plastic thing was in like three pieces, and I looked at the
clutch pedal linkage, and saw that the linkage itself fell apart. These
black plastic things may be some kind of bushing? I slipped the linkage
over the post on the pedal, and was able to clutch twice before it popped
off. Pedal to the floor. Aaaaahhhh. Put it back on, clutched a few more
times to get to a parking lot of a diner that's right there. I looked in
my bedbox for something I could use as a bushing, and after some rummaging
I found a brass or bronze bushing left over from when I was going to
replace the door pins on my crewcab. It fit fine into the eye-rod that
pushes the clutch cylinder piston forward, but didn't fit over the post on
the clutch pedal arm. Looking around, I see my electric drill and my box
of drill bits, but that requires 120V AC, which I don't have.

Wait.

I do!

I had sitting on the back floor of the cab an old APC uninterruptable
power supply. A very small unit, but it's there. I plug in the drill,
and wow, full speed!

Get some vice grips, clamp the bushing into the vice grips, place it on
small scrap of wood that was in the bed box, and tried to carefully bore
straight down the center of the bushing, to enlarge it. As the drill was
slowing down to the point of almost not being useful, the bit broke
through to the wood and I had a bushing. Slipped right on! Dig around
the bed bed some more, and find a very small hose clamp. Put it around
the end of the clutch pedal post, tightening it as tight as I could make
it. It wobbled and moved a little bit, but I couldn't pull it off at
least. I drove home, and wow, the clutch engaged much higher in the pedal
travel than ever before - almost like a new clutch. Maybe it's not as
warn as I thought. Anyway, get home, remove the small hose clamp which
got mangled in the process, and replaced it with a "C" clip. *tap*.

Done!

I decided, being my usual paranoid self, to make another one using my
drill press, so the enlarged bore in the bushing is straighter. The one I
did on my lap on the block of wood in the cab is not all that straight.
Probably doesn't matter, but why not do it right!

 

All I can say is... you should change your username to "Macguyver".

 

What's the chance of having a fully charged UPS sitting on the floor of the cab?

Actually, it's there for a reason. I was going to take it apart and mount the circuit board inside of my homemade dashboard, so I'd have a cheap/free way of adding a 120V outlet in the cab. The UPS uses a 13.2V battery so I figured I could simply attach the wires for the battery, to Ignition and ground through a switch.

Would be nice to be able to plug in a laptop without having to buy a cigarette lighter adapter. And, not having to give up the cigarette lighter! Anyway, that's why it was there. It's to be cannibalized!

 

impressive... Funny story, I had a similar experience about 2 months ago. I pulled into the post office, dropped a few ebay things off, and when I got back into my truck and put the auto lever to D, it didn't shift! Of course it was a rainy day.

I crawl under the truck, and sure enough, the plastic housing that mates the cable to the tranny was in pieces on the ground. The naked little ball end of the cable was smiling at me. Ran to Checkers across the street.

Some JB Weld + a few zip ties, I pieced the plastic puzzle together and I nursed it home... I couldn't create a workaround that I was happy with, so I bought a new cable assembly. I was again as happy as a clam sans $50.

Here's to road repairs!!!

 

Interesting, it must have something to do with shipping ebay items, but I'm sure Dale Gribble, AKA Rusty Shackleford thinks it the government!

 

I think an FBI agent crept under my car in order to disable it so they could bypass my surveilance monitors while secretly uploading the 'National Do Not Call Registry' to the Russians in order to create a civilization of telemarketers that will not stop until we willingly allow taxing of all of our income to the government to finish the Mars planet mock up in Tuscon, Arizona that you fools thought was real...

 

uh huh, uh huh, yep, uh huh.

 

Ohhhh, wise guy, huh? You wanna make fun of our little model planet huh?
Just for that, we're detuning your aluminum skull cap and taking away your secret decoder ring.

Tom
Tucson, AZ
Mar's for sale-2 bags $5, just in time for Halloween.

 

LOL, they should seriously make a reality show about you Frederic

 

Hahaha. You think that was all there is to the story? I did, but apparently not. While running my morning errands (radio shack, auto store, dunkin donuts, and various other things, I clutched at a traffic light and *BANG* the clutch pedal goes to the floor, again. So I let the crewcab roll to the side of the road, and into the same diner parking lot as yesterday. Deja Vu, right? I look underneath expecting my homemade bushing to have popped out, but that couldn't be it. No, of course not. Turns out the plastic rod end of the clutch's master cylinder snapped in several places and littered the truck's floor. Not nice. So, I called my wife, she came and got me, laughing. And, calling around to various auto stores, and two ford dealers, no such luck in anyone having anything remotely useful.

So, I made such a rod end. Sorry for the crappy pictures, I was in a rush to get this done, on the truck, so I could stop polluting the diner with dead trucks. Well, truck, un-plaural.

I made it out of steel. It will not break. I refuse to succum to such pesky inconvienences ever again.

Here is what I started with. 1/4" round stock I had "lying around", the homemade brass or bronze bushing, and what's left of the factory clutch master cylinder eye thing.



And here is the end result. The 1/4" round stock has been cut, shaped, notched to match the factory piece the best I could do with a large file, while the rod was chucked in my drill press. The "eye" is a section of 3/8" thick steel plate I hacked off with my bandsaw. The homemade bushing fits perfectly, so at least I don't have to make another one. At the end of the 3/8" plate, now eye head, I drilled a 1/4" hole to push the round stock in, so it would "hold still" while I zap a bead around it.

It was difficult to hold this piece with my right fingers, and rotate it around consistantly while zapping a bead with my right hand. But, it worked. Got a ride back to my truck, shoved it into the clutch cylinder through the neutral switch that hangs off on the inside, and viola, truck started right up, clutched fine, and now the "bite" of the clutch is even closer to the top of the pedal.



To continue with this theme, I'm going to be running the errands tomorrow I didn't get to do yesterday, or today. So tomorrow I expect the pressure plate will self destruct and I'll be welding fingers on the roadside

 

Wow Frederic!
Sorry to hear you had not one, but a two day 'adventure'.
This happened to my freinds dad years ago and it was the first thing that popped into my head. But I did think you have the UPS in their so you could wire it to the engine battery and run your Dash computer off of it. The ac port is a good idea too though.

Does your truck not have the power point (2nd cig lighter hole?)

Tim

 

My truck had the power point, but with the old dash gone, it's gone too. The connector on the harness (15A!) provides power for the audio amplifiers, the digital overhead compass, and a few other things. The main cig lighter, which is also gone, was on a 30A outlet which feeds the computer power supply. So I've recycled circuits without having to add any, at least so far.

The UPS was there because I'm gutting it for a 120V outlet in the truck, for my laptop, and other things like that.

 

Hehehe. I used to carry a power inverter back when I HAD to drag a laptop around with me everywhere "in case" I needed to dial in for work. I always thought it was silly to convert 12Vdc to 120Vac so the laptops power supply could convert it back to DC again. once the inverter died I used it as a case/heatsink and made my own dc/dc regulator with a couple of output options and stopped carrying the laptops power supply.

At least they let me keep the laptop after they layed everyone off.
Tim

 

I hear ya. The PC power supply I made is a switcher. I was going to buy one online however I couldn't find anything affordable that provides 250W, *and* inverts anything from 9V to 18V, just to be safe.

Winding your own inductors sucks!

 

Frederic, been thru the same thing myself on a 91 Hyundai Excel. Turned out there was a cotter pin that kept the bushing on with a small hole drilled into the pedal assembly rod. Needless to say a safety pin served the duty for a long 3 hour ride home.

Been thru plenty of these bushings on my many F150s as well. Lesson to all, in a pinch you can run without this bushing. You just need something to keep the clutch master cylinder eyelet on the pedal assembly rod. I've used a zip strip (wire tie) and a bent up paper clip in the past and had decent luck. Shift gently and you should be ok. Try to get the bushing replaced ASAP. It will wear a groove into the rod on the pedal assembly and you'll find yourself replacing the whole clutch pedal (been there done that).