Pedal assembly and clutch questions
 

So I just replaced my clutch, flywheel, pressure plate, throw out bearing, pilot bearing, and slave and master cylinder. my truck has always had a clutch pedal with a lot of slop in it from the pushrod on the clutch master cylinder. It was never a problem until after I put my transmission and everything back in the truck and tried to drive it, it would just grind and not even try to go into gear. Me and my boss found a brass bushing that seemed to fit just perfectly between the pushrod and the little stud that the pushrod usually rides on. So there is no more play in the pushrod part of the pedal assembly, and it goes into gear but just barely with quite a bit of force. But now one of the "pivot bushing" inside the pedal bracket are bad, which is still causing quite a bit of play. Now the truck is at least "driveable" it does shift but it takes quite a bit of effort to get it to fall into gear. So my question is that why would a new clutch and resurfaced flywheel cause this. I know that the bad bushing in the pedal assembly isn't helping, but if it worked before why wouldt it work now?

Also so I have a very touchy accelerator pedal. If functions fine but it takes very little force to move the pedal. When riding on a bumpy road (with a straight axle, leaf sprung, 1ton truck), my foot will hit the pedal accidentally and push it in because of how soft the spring is, then the truck will lurch forward hard and sometimes make me hit the pedal again and again and making the truck start to buck like a horse. I haven't had much luck finding anything about a replacement spring, and $200 for a new accelerator pedal is out of the question. Can someone help me out with this?

What year truck with which engine are we talking about here? We need to know if you have an internal or external slave cylinder to your clutch.

1997 f350 7.3, zf5 4x4. It has the external slave on it. When I bought it it can as a pre bled assembly so all I had to do was bolt it to the firewall and clip it to the transmission

Did it come with a plastic "nub" on the end of the push rod on the slave cylinder? The "nub" also has 2 straps that serve to keep the pushrod retracted during packaging and shipping........I had to utilize the nub on my '96 Powerstroke to get full clutch release.....I read about leaving it on in another forum......."nub" acts as a wear bushing as well to save the clutch release arm. I thought it was just a throw away deal that needed to be removed when you installed it but apparently not.

i measured the travel in the pitchfork today and discovered that it isnt quite moving a 1/2 inch yet. which means it is definitely upstairs in the pedal box. i can see one of the pivoting bushings have just about disintegrated and is causing the shaft to move around. i'm gonna go ahead and replace all of the pedal bushings.