clutch pedal bracket

[bluebronco69]

soooo,
just installed the new heavy duty luk kit i got from BC broncos. 11 finger instead of three, much better pressure.
unfortunately more effort to push the pedal.

today while driving back from the gas station at lunch there was a pop when i put the clutch in... wierd, thought it was linkage or something, it still mostly worked, was hard to get into first, and would grind into reverse, no matter, i will adjust it when i get home.
when i got home i adjusted it a little, it worked better, took it for a drive and it got worse after a couple of pushes.

i looked around more, turns out that the bolt holding the clutch bracket onto the cowl, closest to the dash, is ripping out of the sheetmetal.
i assume it is a nut welded to the sheet metal (it is inside of a channel and i cant see it) but the channel is rusty and ripping out...


i have to use it for work tomorrow, so i pumped a couple of good sized sheet metal screws into the bracket, and it is working for now, hopefully it gets me through tomorrow, we will see.


anyone had this happen before?
i think i need to pull the dash, pedals, and linkage, then cut out the old metal, and in with some new...

 

[blubuckaroo]

Cowl rust from water running down the windshield. It happens even where they don't salt the roads and it's the hardest rust locate and repair. Some owners just put in an automatic transmission and sell it to some other sucker.

 

[red hot71]

I can see your problem happening real easy,when I was doing mine I noticed that plate you see on the engine side on the firewall is only spot welded on maybe 1/2 dozen places,and at the time I was building gas struts to lift my hood the bracket I built was bolted near the firewall and every time I put up the hood you would hear a pop,it was the firewall oil-canning at that bracket,so we welded that bracket about every 2" around to reinforce that whole area. Maybe there's some good metal there so you can weld the two together,without pulling the dash? I think when Ford added power brakes they made that bracket way oversized so they could thur bolt that bracket in to the petal mounting bracket to reinforce that whole area,again the firewall cowl area is prone to rust plus add more clutch pleasure.