The Pony Car Project- It Is Always Something!

Today I drove to Harbor Freight in Tacoma. I elected to take the Mustang. It was a nice drive to Tacoma until I exited the freeway and could not shift out of gear and after a complete stop could not shift into any gear. It was then that I noticed the clutch pedal was loose and mushy. I got under the hood and tightened the clutch cable with the manual adjuster. Did it just loosen on the drive over? No, by the time I drove the short distance to Harbor Freight, the clutch was loose again. It seemed like the cable casing was pulling through the end stop.

I completed my shopping and went back to work on the car. I could tighten the adjuster, but a few cycles of the clutch pedal and it would be loose again. I finally ran out of adjustment. So I placed a couple of spring clamps that I had just bought at Harbor Freight in the space between the adjuster and the normal end of the cable. Now the cable housing was tight. It worked and I managed to drive home. I did try to take the route home with the fewest stops and the least traffic and kept my shifting to a minimum.

So I drove the Bronco to the auto parts store and got a new cable. The old cable came out easy and the new one started going in easy, but it seemed to come up short. After some messing around, I found that I had to brace the pedal hard all the way out in order to get the automatic clutch adjuster(it doesn't work anyway) to release so that I could pull enough slack in the clutch end of the cable to connect it to the clutch release arm. Seems to work smoother now too!

It is always something!

The new cable. It is covered with a heat shield which is a nice touch since it runs right by the headers. 

 Old and new cables.

The failure. The inner casing and wire reinforcement pulled out of the end connection. I wonder if heat contributed to this.