So I successfully completed the 6th gen auto to manual swap on my 98 accord and things had been going pretty well. It drives great and I have finally broken in my new stage 1 clutch and lightened flywheel. Now something wierd is going on and my clutch pedal is extremely hard to disengage. It will work fine when I drive my car for the first time of the day but after it warms up and I've been driving for a while the pedal just gets harder and harder. I have all new parts, clutch cylinder,slave, and a custom stainless steel line. I've tried adjusting the pedal highth but even on the lowest setting where I should have the most pedal play it still is as hard as a rock. If I depress the pedal all the way to the floor I am unable to even shift into another gear, but if I only depress the pedal like an inch it shifts fine. I'm really at a loss, the only thing I think it might be is maybe my pressure plate bolts are coming loose causing the fingers to press against the throwout bearing causing pressure in my slave making the pedal harder, but that doesn't explain why it works fine after it's been sitting and cooled off. Please let me know if you guys have any idea's. Thanks

 

Obviously a thermal condition, now the trick is to determine what's happening. There should be no reason for any of the support components to cause this. I can think of only two things.
Throw-out bearing is binding on the collar that it slides on.
The Diaphram Spring in the pressure plate has issues.

Truely a blind man's shot in the dark (I admit), but I don't have much else to offer (sorry)

P

 

Yeah, I was affraid it was something like that. Looks like I'll just have to pull the tranny and investigate. If it is the bearing will just lubeing up the collar with more high temp grease solve the prob or am I gonna just have to replace it?

 

Depending on what you find will determine your course of action.
Whenever I instaled clutches, I'd polish the collar (I've GOT to rephrase that!) with 120 grit sandpaper and lubricate it with a high-temp grease.
There should be no indication of binding. There should be no reason to replace the throw-out bearing. The pressure plate may be a different story.

P

 

Ok so I pulled everything and the pressure plate and throw-out bearing both looked great. Bearing was plenty lubed up. The only thing I noticed was a little excessive wear on the pressure plate fingers. I think that my master cylinder is some how causing the slave to over extend, pressing the bearing too hard into the fingers. I'm going to switch out the master with an oem one and see if it helps. Maybe the plunger is binding in the cylinder? Let me know it you have anymore ideas.