Replaced the clutch pedal spring tonight.
The GT86 has a helper spring on the clutch pedal which is pivoted in such a way to serve two purposes; when the pedal is released, the spring keeps it pushed all the way up, and then as you depress the pedal past a certain point, it does the opposite and helps push it down against the clutch pressure, the idea being to make the clutch feel lighter. The downside is that is nulls the feeling of the pedal and makes the disengagement point of the clutch quite hard to judge, and you can also feel a kind of unnatural, nonlinear change in the pedal pressure as you bring it back up and the spring starts to work against you. This has been one of my main criticisms of the car since day one, and although it's a popular modification in the US to simply remove the spring, it's much harder to do on RHD models because of the design of the clutch pedal. So I'd kind of learned to live with it, but I still lurch on downshifts quite often and over-rev when pulling away.
However, about a week ago, I found a detailed guide for how to do the modification on RHD vehicles, from an Australian owner. It means taking the pedal out of the car, but apart from the discomfort of having to scrabble around in the driver's footwell, it's not too bad a job - three bolts, disconnect the master cylinder and remove some sensors, but once out of the car, it makes replacing the spring easier (no idea how some people manage it in situ).
So I took the pedal out, and replaced the very powerful OEM spring and replaced it with a less powerful aftermarket version (most people just remove the spring entirely, but this can leave the pedal a little sloppy at the top of the travel).
The result is a marked improvement in clutch feeling. The clutch itself is a little heavier, as you are now feeling the weight of the clutch itself without assistance, and this means the engagement point is much easier to judge. Straight away, I felt a difference pulling away. I took the car for a quick spin around the block and it's feeling a hell of a lot better. There's less of a tendency to over-rev as I up shift while trying to re-engage the clutch, and less lurching on downshifts. The pedal is slightly heavier, but not enormously so, and is much more linear. A bit of a faff for such a simple job, but it's made an immense improvement. Very pleased
Clutch assembly on my bench with the new spring installed, top right.
, the camera has captured the flicker of the gauge display which is not visible to the naked eye.
