So I'm on my 4th cluctch master cylinde in 2 years and I'm thinking something is wrong with how the cylinder is angled/attached/something. I've beat my head against this issue for a couple years now and I'm out of things to try. Before I throw any more time at it, I'd like a few other opinions. I don't notice any unusual pedal effort, although it's certainly a lot stiffer than most other clutches I've tried. All those have been in substantially smaller cars though (Miata, Celica, WRX), so maybe that's the difference.

Here's a couple of pics of the bent pushrod:





The red mark in the first one is around my prime suspect:



It looks like when the mechanic installed the slave cylinder it was put in too low. I know he didn't bother removing the brake master cylinder when he put it in, so I'm not sure he took the time to drill the hole properly. Problem is, if I moved it up to a more proper location, the new u-bolt holes would overlap the old ones. Ideas?

The other idea that my mechanic (not the guy who screwed up the auto/manual swap) mentioned was to place a shim on the engine side and tilt the clutch master back to optimize the angle. Here's a picture of how that looks right now WITHOUT the shim:



There's a couple more pics here:
http://s208.photobucket.com/albums/bb116/raven0840/
Anyway, it seems like a silly thing to keep me off the road so I'd really like to get it taken care of. Any thoughts would be welcome. Thanks!

 

factory T5 car, or a conversion, ive done a conversion, and you need to get the alignment dead on, or this will happen. but seeing that the supports and used tells me its must be close, what kind of clutch, ive heard of this problem happening with guys that are running a stiff clutch such as a centerforce etc...

 

it's a conversion. I had a guy switch it over but it was botched terribly. He used sheet metal screws to hold the master cylinder to the firewall, he didn't install a pilot bushing, didn't install the braces, the bracket was hacked up either by him or the previous owner, and he didn't bolt the bracket properly (he didn't remove the steering column, so that bolt wasn't even there). I've fixed all this stuff including replacing the bracket and transmission (was non-W/C, now it's got a W/C) and installing the proper braces.

It did take a little playing around to get the braces to line up. If I have to redrill those holes, any advice on how to repair the old holes?

I don't know what kind of pressure plate it has. I destroyed the clutch friction disc, probably because of too much wobble resulting from not having an pilot bushing. I replaced it with a Zoom (I think) clutch disc, resurfaced the flywheel and reused the old pressure plate. The plate was a little scuffed but by no means in bad shape, not glazed or gouged. The friction disc had 3 rivets holding the hub together and it looked like regular friction surfaces, like standard "el cheapo" brake pads so I doubt it's anything special.

Throwout bearing is less than two years old and looked fine when I had it out this past spring. The input shaft collar also looks fine and was greased with high-temp lithium before re-installation.