Anyone with a 5spd 3rd gen 4Runner knows that Toyota dropped the ball with their design of the clutch pedal assist/return spring. Last week I entered round three of my battle with this little issue, and I would like to share my current solution in case it helps others.
But first, a quick overview of the fight to date:
When I purchased the truck in 2009 I noticed the clutch pedal made some weird noises. After I finally got around to pulling the clutch pedal I found that the factory bushing was completely trashed, the spring had eroded the pedal, and the rest of the bushings were old and cracked.
I pulled out the factory spring and replaced it with a linear spring, which was the popular solution at the time.
Fast forward to 2013. My clutch pedal effort is very heavy and I decided to re-install the factory spring to see if it made a differences. At the same time I replaced all of the bushings in the pedal assembly, and most importantly I fabricated a bronze bushing to use at the spring/clutch contact point. This was the popular solution for the Tacoma at the time and is still highly recommended.
Things worked fine for about a year, and then during a recent trip to Oregon the bronze bushing broke and wound up in my floor mat. Awesome.
Last weekend I went offroading in the Sierras and I wanted to get the clutch spring figured out, so on friday I pulled the pedal out again.
The plastic bushings are still good, but there's even more wear on the clutch pedal.
I don't have a welder, so I used some metal epoxy to glue on steel side plates and to fill in the worn out area. My idea was to increase the surface area so it wouldn't wear through so quickly.
I then made a new bronze bushing and put it in place and re-installed the spring (after the epoxy cured overnight). Conveniently this new bushing failed after about 20s of testing on the bench, so the spring came back out. And to make things more fun the spring pressure was strong enough that it popped the new side plates off. Crap.
I needed the truck the work the next day so out came more tools. I drilled a hole through the side plates and bolted them in place. And since I had one sitting around I put a factory plastic bushing in place. It failed after about 15s of testing on the bench.
For those keeping score we are now at spring 2 and Matt 0. I was going to make another bronze bushing, but bronze is very fragile and as soon as it deforms due to pressure it crumbles. After a quick trip to the hardware store I came home with some thick wall nylon spacers. Here are the spacers and the remains of the bronze and plastic bushings.
At this point I decided that I would probably have to replace the clutch pedal, so it was time to have some fun. I used a file to widen the notch, and then machined the nylon bushing to fit, attempting to keep as much wall thickness as possible. This nylon is very tough and a pain to machine, which is a good sign. Here's the new jumbo bushing in the clutch pedal, with the bolted on side plates. I got sick of removing the side bushings and cleaning metal flakes out of them so I just covered them in tape to keep things clean. The bushing is drilled out so it clicks into place over the spring and fits tightly.
To install you first click the bushing over the spring, and then install the whole thing in the clutch pedal bracket. Having installed the spring 4+ times in one day I can strongly recommend using needle nose vise grips to get it in place. The bushing is notched on the sides to fit between the tines on the pedal, and I coated it with a lot of grease.
So that was a lot of pictures for just a small bushing, you might be asking how does it work? Well, it held up great all weekend. I'm really impressed with this setup, the pedal has noticeably less slop and a less gritty movement. Pedal effort is still really high, but I think that is because the clutch needs to be replaced. And since it started slipping on the trail this weekend a new clutch is in my future.
If you need a clutch bushing I highly recommend using a nylon spacer. They are much less expensive than bronze bushings but seem to hold up better, I'll report back on that in a few months.
- Matt
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