Had a bit of spirited run in the car, got back home and parked up on the drive. Went back out to the car and hour or so later to put it into the garage and clutch pedal went straight to floor. Pushed it back into garage, jacked it up on some ramps and could see clutch fluid dripping out of the bell housing. Whoops - engine and gearbox out job but decided to leave body on this time and take engine/gearbox out.
To cut a long story short the engine and box would simply not come out. The engine would not move far enough forward to allow the gearbox flange to drop out between the narrowing chassis frame. The front of the engine could not be lifted high enough as the sump would catch on the front crossmember just a few tantalising mm short of clearing. In the end I had to unbolt the body from the chassis and just jack up the body by an inch or so and then the engine popped out easily. It turned out that the top of the RaceLine water rail by the temperature gauge feed was just making contact with the dual lip fibreglass join at rear of the engine bay on the passenger side. I have since cut this away so dropping the engine back in will be much easier.
Anyway I have now removed the concentric slave cylinder and am trying to find a replacement. Part number is 95GG-7502-B1c and Iād be grateful if anyone out there has ever replaced one of these units with a different component. Iām a bit reluctant to replace it with exactly the same unit. I have spoken with Spyder and am awaiting their response.
Removing the engine and box was made considerably easier as I fitted the new Spyder gear linkage earlier on this year so there were no problems associated with the long gear lever any longer. Iāve had the car over 15 years now and itās covered almost 37,000 miles, mostly trouble free.
Im still using the Sierra/Granada type so havenāt tried this but I did hear that a Mondeo unit might fit. Worth researching because they seem more common but untested from my standpoint so tread warily.
Iāve been hunting around for nearly three days and only found one exact match on eBay where an enterprising seller has one on offer for Ā£850. Good luck with that! All other outlets are Out Of Stock and same applies to other alternatives, SACHS 318 999 903, VALEO 804536 and LUK 510000610 who are advertising one for Ā£500+.
The Mondeo ones are available at around Ā£60 and are the same 32mm diameter so there is a possibility that one of there can be made to fit, once a correct length throw can be established. I can do this with the engine/box out of the car by attaching the clutch master cylinder via the flexible fluid pipe to the gearbox. The feed and bleed are in different positions but a bit of brake pipe can sort that out, although it might alter the ease of bleeding a bit.
cheers,
Colin
At the end of the day it can only be a seal thatās failed so Iām going to try and take the slave apart and see what there. Might get lucky
In my Zetec conversion to my Plus2, I used the Mondeo/Contour(US) clutch release bearing, $60 on Amazon. From the picture, it appears your currrent one has a custom spacer between between the bearing retainer and the release bearing. This spacer may or may not be the correct thickness with the Mondeo unit. Some adjustment may be necessary. I turned up a new bearing retainer with the correct spacing, replacing the original on my 4 speed transmission. I am using -4AN lines from the release bearing for both the pressure and bleed functions. Due to spacing, I had to make a custom fitting on the bleed port. With the bleed line running up between the 2 master cylinders. This allows bleeding to be accomplished at the same time when adding fluid, as the fluid will match the same levels between the clutch master reservoir and the bleed nipple.. No need to involve another person when performing the bleeding. This mod has been a marriage saver.
Thanks to all for your helpful replies; at least I am now certain that a solution can be found at a reasonable price and with a little effort to get the throw length calculated correctly. It will be easy to increase the spacer thickness with some small washers but fortunately there are a few sites that provide spacers of different thicknesses should I need a thinner one. The MT75 bell housing is integral to the gearbox and a bit of Box on/Box off is always good for building muscle and may test our 48year marriage a tad.
The clutch and pressure plate shown minimal signs of wear so itās unlikely for the bearing to have thrown out too far. However the bearing has always been noisy when idling but went quiet when the clutch was depressed so Iāll be glad to hear the back of that. Hopefully!
My Spyder supplied MT75 (attached to a Twin Cam rather than a Zetec) has a distinctive tick/bang while idling with the clutch engaged in neutral. The noise goes away when the clutch pedal is depressed.
Any insight on what might be going on appreciated. No immediate plans to remove the engine and gearbox, but thinking I would like to fix this in the future if I need to take the drivetrain out again.
Thanks for posting the picture of your shifter. To clarify, is that the new latest and greatest linkage that Spyderfan has posted on? It looks quite different from mine, which I think is the second generation āanti-sizzleā linkage from several years ago. Thinking of purchasing the new linkage to have to hand should I ever remove the drivetrain in the future.
this is what you probably have as I had mine upgraded not long after I did the conversion, circa 2013 possibly. As you can see it is much larger than the latest one and I really canāt understand why Spyder doesnāt get behind the new one and market it a lot more as it really transforms the car.
As to the noise while idling, and thinking about what Bernie asked about a possible overthrow, it has made me think about whether the bearing throw was just on the very edge of overthrowing in my setup. I donāt fully understand the bearing setup yet, apart from seeing lots of measurement needed to calculate the thickness of the spacer, but in my mind things are designed to work within a reasonable tolerance and not designed to fail - built in obsolescence being something else (mechanical as well as software).
So my thoughts are that my thrust bearing should not have been noisy and if it was then it was not fitted in the correct position in the first place. It could have been positioned slightly too far away from the pressure plate fingers so when the pedal was fully pressed down it was just about operating the clutch. I understand manufacturing tolerances and slight measurement drift but it does make sense to me (at the moment, until I know better of course) that there could be a bit of clutch chatter until the bearing face takes up any slack in the pressure plate fingers.
I have a similar noise with my VW Up - it rattles in neutral and that goes when it warms up and I start driving. I understand itās the first motion shaft bearing that on those models is known to wear and rattle but not commonly fail outright. The effect on mine is to make engagement into first difficult with a cold engine.
Clutch wear causes the piston in a concentric setup to sit deeper into its bore, so overextension is unlikely if its been in use for many miles.
The original Elan external slave cylinder setup uses springs to pull the bearing away from the pressure plate and bottom out the slave piston in its bore. This āresetsā or āhomesā the piston each cycle and is the reason the adjuster rod is required as it accounts for wear as the fingers move away from the flywheel face.
Some (all?) modern systems are designed to self adjust and typically keep the bearing in contact with the fingers with a light spring somewhere in the system to achieve this. The piston homes against the fingers and the fluid volume behind it decreasing with wear is the self adjustment. The master reservoir fluid level actually increases with clutch wear. There are a couple advantages to this. No adjustment required. The bearing isnāt rudely accelerated each time the clutch is pressed, and the wear between its face and the pressure plate is decreased. The downside is a throwout bearing that continuously spins.
My noise is consistent whether cold or warm. Seems this might be a spacing issue that can only be addressed with the engine and transmission separated. Interesting that the noise has always been there. Transmission has been used with two different Twin Cams. Noise present before and after complete transmission teardown by Spyder.
Hope it doesnāt get to this - but - I really struggled to measure the movement dimensions so I sketched it out.
My measurements wonāt be perfect but they should be close but they are based on an AP racing uprated clutch unit which was a direct replacement for a standard clutch. No idea how the clutch plates compare but the overall spacings should be close enough that if you want to compare against my install, you at least have reference points.
I replaced the fixed clutch pedal link (that joins the master cyl. to the pedal) with a threaded version (good old AP racing again) so that I can fine tune the pedal but beware - the Ford concentric clutch will overthrow leading to failure and I was told that if it does, it canāt be rebuilt.
When setting up the pedal, I started with a stiff gear change and extended the pedal travel until it was clean and stopped there. The process wasnāt very scientific and I have been ultra cautious to the degree that I fitted an adjustable clutch stop on the pedal that closes on the bulkhead to prevent overthrow (very much belt and braces)
Thanks for posting Gav. The material should be very helpful for my looming winter project.
As these things often go, I checked my clutch fluid level this week and it was significantly low. It is still functioning after top-up, but very concerning. I havenāt checked for the expelled fluid yet, but looking like I have a similar issue.
I am pretty sure I have a replacement slave and clutch plate available as I recall purchasing spares from Spyder when I had the transmission serviced. If I do remove the engine & transmission this winter I think I better have this issue looked at carefully at my local independent. Thinking I should purchase the improved Spyder linkage this fall and have it on hand for the winter.
Our driving season is rapidly drawing to a close with snow in the foothills already, and perhaps a bit more on the way for Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend.
The good news is the car has never ran better, and we had a fabulous driving season this year. The highlight was a 1,500 mile fall tour through the Canadian Rockies & Selkirks with about thirty other Lotus cars. A club member did a great summary of our adventures hereā¦
The MT75 gearbox has been rebuilt and fitted with an hydraulic slave from a V6 Mondeo, retaining the Spyder spacer. The rattling in the box, when idling, turned out to be the main bearing on the first motion shaft but several other bearings were also worn so all have been replaced and new seals fitted everywhere. The original hydraulic slave was from a scorpio 2.9 and had ruptured but it was too expensive (Ā£500+) to source an original unit, even if one could be found.
The feed (M10 X 1.0) and bleed (M8 X 1.0) on the Mondeo V6 slave are both located at the top of the slave which makes bleeding difficult. I am fitting a remote bleeding pipe back up to the side of the clutch master cylinder as outlined earlier in this thread by member Prezoom. There is a kit available to do this on SHOPBHP that has the fitment for the M8 X 1.0 thread on the slave cylinder.
Progress will be a bit slow as Iāve torn the meniscus in my knee but should repair itself provided I take it easy for a while.
Hopefully!
