[DeTomaso] Clever Clutch Assist

[Ken Green]

   Actually, at full release, the spring in the figure is holding the pedal out, but after a little depression of the pedal, the spring goes past center and pushes the pedal in to help disengage the clutch. 
 
    It seems very clever to me, and an excellent approach to taming a heavy clutch.  What I'm not sure about is the force required to do much good at such a short lever arm.  Seems like the brackets would have to be very sturdy.  
 
Ken



--- On Wed, 8/27/08, MikeLDrew at aol.com <MikeLDrew at aol.com> wrote:

From: MikeLDrew at aol.com <MikeLDrew at aol.com>
Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] Clever Clutch Assist
To: kenn_green at yahoo.com, detomaso at realbig.com
Date: Wednesday, August 27, 2008, 6:54 PM

In a message dated 8/27/08 16 53 8, kenn_green at yahoo.com writes:


> Is the clutch assist spring in this article common (go down to second 
> figure)
>  
> http://www.artsautomotive.com/clutchstory.htm
>  
> It looks like a good idea.
> 

Panteras had the opposite approach--springs designed to withdraw the pedal, 
not help to depress it.   The springs are not coil springs, but rather a 
hair-pin style, wrapped around the main shaft that the pedals pivot on.   One
each 
for the brake and clutch.   These springs have snapped on roughly 100% of the 
Panteras out there, and almost nobody knows they are even there.   Crawl under 
the dash sometime and you'll probably find yours sitting there and doing 
nothing.

Replacing them is simple enough but requires you to remove the whole pedal 
bracket, then remove the clutch pedal from the shaft, withdraw the shaft,
remove 
the broken springs, install the new ones and reassemble.

Here's a photo of a unit that I rebuilt on Stephane Bergeron's car a
couple 
of years ago.   This is the 'before' photo, showing that the brake
pedal spring 
is working, and the clutch pedal spring isn't, because it snapped in two!  
I 
had already removed it when I shot this photo:

http://members.aol.com/mikeldrew/Pedals.jpg

The completed assembly (with new springs, available cheap from the Pantera 
vendors) was a thing of beauty, with the aluminum plate bead-blasted, and the 
pedals blasted and painted.   Unfortunately I forgot to shoot photos of the 
'after' product before installing it in the car. :<(

Mike




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