confidence

ijust put a ZC engine into a 90 civic si using the stock Si flywheel, clutch, and tranny. everything goes well until i bolt the thing together and put it back in the car. i hook everything back up and go to test the clutch. the peddle went straight to the floor and stayed there. i then rechecked the cable connection on the tranny and did some adjusting. still the same problem. i looked at the spring on the peddle under the dash. it looks ok too...so i ripped the entire engine and trans out again and took the tranny off to see if i messed anything up. With the tranny off and out of the car the lever moves the throw-out bearing like normal. the pressure plate appears to be 100% ok and the clutch looks fine. i took them off to make sure i didn't do anything retarded like install the clutch plate backward. it was on correctly so i put it all back, torqued it all to spec and put the entire thing back in the car. i reconnected the clutch cable and it still acts stupid. i don't know what’s going on here. it should be fine. i tested the clutch by spinning the engine over with the starter and the car in gear. with the clutch cable is connected and the peddle on the floor the car will move forward. this means the clutch is not working. anyone have any idea why? the cable moves the lever when you press the peddle. the cable moves back into the housing when the peddle is depressed and it’s not hooked up to the tranny. i take that as a sign the cable is ok. so what now? Why doesn’t it work, any ideas??

31flavorscivic

I installed a centerforce II into my dohc zc, and when I got done with it I had the same problem.

How I fixed it was I bent the clutch cable under the radiator hoses, and I believe back toward the firewall and finally back through to the pedal. The problem is that there is just too much slack in the cable.

I had someone bend the cable 90 degrees right when it comes off the bracket on the transmission, and I did get some tension. Then I just rerouted the cable with a few bends stated above and it's worked fine ever since.

You have no idea how scared I was when that happened to me the first time, I thought I had done something stupid.

The whole problem lies in the fact that, especially before I rerouted my cable, when I pressed down on the pedal, the force moved the cable around, resulting in alot of wasted energy which should instead be going to the pressure plate. By immobilizing the cable, it will solve the problem, and result in a much firmer pedal feel.

Someone on this forum even zip tied their clutch cable to their strut tower bar to immobilize it, which would work even better.

I'll try to post pics of my setup if I have any.


Modified by 31flavorscivic at 5:36 PM 10/23/2005

confidence

i found the problem. turns out the owner of the car neglected to tell me his clutch cable was bad. turns out he knew about it before his engine blew up and he had a new one under his seat. when he told me about it i slapped the new one in and all was well. wish he had told me before i ripped the new engine out.