Thread: 17 year old car. Anyone know YET why we need to get extra adjustment from the clutch?

lol yeah i use the spacers and havent had any problems as far as adjustment goes, im actually using 3 spacers and it gives me plenty of adjusment, want to know something funny was the other week i thought my original oem cable had broken but turned out it wasnt the cable and when i replaced it with a new oem nissan cable i looked at the common break points on my original cable and found no wear at all. The cable is very well lubed, it was dirty but still well greased with a thick grease, weather factory or not but then again this car has never been where there is moisture problems so that probably helped alot.

Turned out my clutch fork that holds the throw out bearing broke at both prongs. The throwout bearing went crooked and cracked the sleeve on it so i replaced the throwout bearing and fork and greesed the hell out of the throw out bearing sleeve and i will say my clutch feel is soo smooth now, it doesnt even feel like i have an act extreem pp with 6 puck disk anymore, haha besides the slight chatter sometimes during engagement. haha

I have to agree totally with Andreas about the cable bracket brace. Cold, my adjustment is tight and it goes into 1st and reverse, no problem. Warm, it loses adjustment and crunches into 1st and rev. I am not adjusting the cable anymore because I am already on the PP teeth with the t/o bearing. Asked my 11 year old daughter to sink in the clutch pedal, and yes the bracket flexes foward. So imagine the flex when I push it in? Andreas, I need this part yesturday. Paypal ready.

I have been telling people this for years.

What people dont understand is just puttingin a spacer pc does nothing but causes premature wear on the preasure plate and TO bearing. These 2 pcs should never be touching eachother while the engine is running unless you are pressing in the clutch.

It also causes more stress on the clutch arm and bracket causing them to break.

I have been making this bracker for over 10 years and people love them as they solve many problems. You clutch pedal will be smooth as butter.

When I first tried to sell these thing people called bull****. Well all I need is a few people to get them and I am 100% behind this part that you will be happy.

I can send my core if you have one. I can't do the downtime unless I find one in a boneyard.
I want to ask why no one else figured this out selling all the clutch kits they do. I am sure JWT has done clutch installs and have noticed this problem. What did they do to their customers cars to solve it?
Then again, we just found out about the rerounding the O2 and Travis is the only one doing VQ swaps in B15's so I guess it is not unheard of that one man solves this problem.

The first sentence is false. The second sentence is true. Putting a spacer does not cause premature wear on the pressure plate and throw-out bearing because putting in a spacer does not cause the throw-out bearing to contact the pressure plate fingers. The spacer effectively shortens the cable (if it has stretched some) back to OEM length allowing for proper use of the clutch. Andreas, you even put a spacer on your bracket because it is a smart thing to do.

I'm sorry, I don't see it.


Look, the spacer is a legitimate solution to this problem. It's not the perfect solution, or even the best solution, but it is a good solution. As far as I can tell your bracket is the best solution, but only because it incorporates a proper spacer welded on with a groove cut out (not loose washers or copper piping) and it has another edge on the competition because of the support brace you also add. It's a terrific solution to our stupid problem, but a cheap spacer isn't a poor solution by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe I misunderstood what you were trying to say?

I agree with you here. The spacer is a cheap easy solution, that said I DO like the brace idea because I did see the bracket flex even with the spacer. The flexing IMO causes my cable to actually still lose adjustment when the engine compartment is warmed up making it almost impossible to NOT crunch going into reverse.

To sit and comment on a part yet not knowing how it truely works is silly.

Yes, I do have a spacer, but you are missing the point. The spacer is not the fix of the problem. The true fix is to stop the bracket flexing backwards. The spacer is there for added adjustment for low engauging clutches or slightly stretched cables.

When you guys put spacers in you have to adjust the cable tight. This leaves the TOB riding on the clutch fingers causing premature wear. I have heard almost all of these guys say that they have no play in their cable once they put the spacer in and they have to keep the cable tight for it to disengage properly. I have worked on these cars since 1992 and everyone who has come in with a spacer has the cable tight as to cause the TOB to ride on the presure plate all the time. When you have worked on as many SR20s as I have you start to see a pattern. You can now see the probelm and can come to a conclusion on how to fix it.

The damn Spacer you guys do is just a bandade causing even more problems.


Next just putting a spacer causes the cable to break prematurely as the spacer falls down and the cable is rubbing on the bracket as the spacer can not align itself. What happens when metal rubs on metal.

You see by putting just a spacer in you cause the bracket to flex even more.

When the bracket keeps flexing forward without the brace, tension on the cable keeps increasing higher and higher as the angle of the leaver to the bracket changes, its a leverage thing, this puts more force on the leaver causing it to snap. Leavers snaping is very common yet most of you dont know why. Its for this reason listed above. When the cable is set right the leaver to bracket are about parallel. As you pull on the leaver, and it starts going past the parallel point it takes more force to pull on it. Its easier to pull on something straight than at an angle. Now as the bracket flexes forward and the lever is pulled backward the angle changes even more drastically, This now causes the tenetion to go up drastically. This is what causes premature lever failure as your leverage on the clutch decreases tention on the cable must increase to apply the same force.

Once this bracket is put on, you can even feel right away that there is less pedal effort to push downward. Why read post above. You have more leverage on the clutch. Thus using less force to push downward which has less stress on the parts ( BenFenner you are making comments on a product while not truely understanding how it works )

Anyone who has had one of these brackets can tell you how much easier it is to push down the clutch

Now let go to why I called this the tranny saving pc.

If you put this part on. It will stop you from grinding gears, why your clutch will dissengage properly. We all know that the 3rd gear is weak but if the clutch does not disengauge properly then you will be grinding them under high RPMs. Speeding up the process.

BenFenner, it is so easy to make a comment on this product and say how simple it is but yet no one has came up with the true solution. Now you have the product in your face and now, wow its so simple. You say well you welded the spacer on to fix this yet no one else did it.

PHYSICS!!!! Lets say it again PHYSICS !!! YEAH!!!!

So people with low engaging clutches or slightly stretched cables should be able to use a spacer as an extremely cheap, good solution to the clutch adjustment problem (but not the bracket bending problem) correct?

This has not been my experience at all. I put my spacer in because when tightening the cable all the way, it wasn't tight enough. The cable was flopping around on the clutch lever. I needed it even tighter. I saw an easy way to accomplish this by effectively moving the mounting point of the clutch cable back towards the firewall. I didn't think the copper reducer trick would be a good solution, so I came up with my own using simple washers.









I can't vouch for anyone else, but in my case I was able to adjust the clutch cable how ever I wanted after adding the spacers. If I wanted the clutch lever pushing on the TO bearing I could have done that, but that would be silly, so I backed it up some and there's a bit of an air gap between the cable pin and the clutch lever. When the clutch pedal is pushed down this air gap is taken up, then the lever starts moving the TO bearing to the PP, and so on.

I can see why you'd be against the spacer idea now. I figured it would be child's play, and everyone would get it "right". I guess I was wrong.

Sounds like we as a community need to do a better job explaining how this is done then. =/

Once again, this is not something I've experienced with my method. The spacer(s) I used have no way of falling down (not even sure what that means) because they fit well.

If you're just moving the mounting point backwards to bring things back to the way they used to be, I don't see how the bracket would bend more. No angles change here.

This is a great point that I didn't even think of. Once again proving why your solution is the best one out there, but this doesn't discount the spacer trick as a quick, easy, valid solution. It just doesn't address the bracket bending issue but it doesn't make that issue any worse.

I didn't weld my spacer on. I was giving you credit for welding your spacer on.

Your washer spacer method works on yours because there was very litte adjustment needed to correct your problem.


The problem has a wide adjustment area depending on Clutch design, Clutch Presure and Cable stretch. You are working with 1/4 or so and at that level the cable still sits in the hole so with washers or spacers and the cable will not drop down causing the cable to rub on the bracket. You are looking at things from your own car. Again we are working on cars with a wide adjustment problem form 1/4in to 1 in. If you were to move more than 3/8 of spacer or washer you cable would not fit in the hole and fall down.

You are working in your own world with this and not from the perspective of fixing everyones problem all at the same time. Your car does not apply to everyones elses car but this bracket fixes everyones problem.

I agree Andreas. I wasn't thinking about those who'd need much more adjustment than me. While I was thinking up this solution, I worried about having to use more than two or three washers, and what I would do about that, as I didn't want my cable to fall down as you're describing. I'd decided if it came to that I would JB weld two washers together, cut a wide slit through the stack of washers and then JB weld it to the bracket. Then I would use one or two more washers just as I did previously if I had to. I was in a pinch and had to get my car on the road. I'd never run into this problem before so I didn't plan ahead. I guess all I'm trying to say here is that the spacer technique is a fine solution, but as you've pointed out very well it must be done correctly and there's a lot of people who don't seem to understand how to do that. In a pinch or on a budget it will get you the adjustment you need with no major side-effects to worry about. Once done properly, you should be able to reply on it for years to come. Just don't expect it to solve all the clutch cable problems. Yes?