Hey All Y'all,

I have a 2000 Impreza RS with 116,000 miles. About 40,000 miles ago my stock clutch started slipping so I dropped the tranny and replaced it with the ACT Street Clutch myself. The new clutch is excellent and very strong... it's worth noting that the pedal now has the same stiff feel that my brother's 2000 Impreza L with the cable clutch has, even though my RS has the hydraulic clutch... the pressure plate is that much more stiff.

So anyway, just yesterday, 40,000 miles into the clutch, I stopped at a gas station for fill-up. After starting the car again, the clutch pedal felt really bizarre. The pedal would go in about 1" with fairly no resistance at all, and then when fully depressed seemed like it was "just barely" releasing the clutch disk. I pulled over and had my wife push the clutch in and out while I watched the disk release fork from under the hood. It seemed to be working fine, and all the hydraulic fluids were at the correct levels.

This led me to believe the problem must in fact be that the pedal lever/rod connecting to the hydraulic system must have bent due to the 40,000 miles of extra pedal force from the pressure plate... I'll be looking in my service manuals in a minute to find that linkage and figure out how to replace it. Hopefully I can rig it back to proper function, or AutoZone has the replacement part, since my Scooby parts department is closed Sunday, and I really need to use my car tomorrow...

(Even though the clutch seems to perform okay still, I'm afraid of driving it since that lever could finish giving way completely, at the least opportune time, dropping the clutch and running me into the back end of someone else at a stop light!)

Anyone else experience this with a stock or upgraded clutch? Easy to fix?

J

 

Okay, after inspection it seems extremely unlikely that the pedal lever/rod could bend. That is some heavy-duty major chunk of metal.

After moving the clutch in and then out with my hand, it seems to have "unstuck" all on its own. I'm going to run to the store and get some hydraulic fluid and bleed the slave. Hopefully it stays fixed.