hoino11

Back Story:
So mid last week I noticed that my brakes and clutch felt spongy and then I started hearing a chuffing noise from the front driver's side that was worsening with even the shortest trips. This lead me to find completely black brake fluid with particulate floating around in the reservoir, yay. Long story short, after a few hours of dismembering the car and lots of pouring through the FSM and threads here I found that the rings on the clutch master cylinder's piston were shredded.
Apparently someone didn't replace the dust boot on the end of the master cylinder where the pushrod comes through the firewall last time it was out of the car. This allowed a rock to get inside the cylinder itself (and lots of moisture I'm sure) which caused the master cylinder's piston ring to disintegrate into the system and the brake fluid to become acidic. The acidity then started eating away at everything rubber in the brake/clutch system and lead the caliper on the driver's side and both rear wheel cylinders to freeze up.

The issue:
After flushing the lines and laying all the parts out to give a decent cleaning/rebuild I started to wonder if the clutch's engagement could be shortened just as you would your shift lever's. Yes I've adjusted the clutch with the threads attaching the pedal to the CMC, but even with the proper adjustment I still felt like it was way too long. Keep in mind that this adjustment only dictates how far the CMC pushrod is actuated, so if your clutch doesn't fully engage until the last 30 percent then you're stuck with a tall clutch. Since nowhere online seems to have a solution and I had to wait on parts anyways I started playing with ideas to fix this issue, with great success so far might I add.

The idea:
Turns out it's as simple as a homemade adapter. Think about it, only the CMC's pivot point (where the clevis pin goes in) needs to be changed and everything else stays the way it is. Remember that I have everything spoken for removed from the car... To do this I drilled a hole in the clutch pedal a bit further down than the stock clevis pivot point, removed the clevis from the CMC pushrod threads and instead placed a 8mmx(1.25?) bolt in its place, made an adapter, and installed that adapter between the clevis with it's new bolt and the CMC pushrod. With this you get full travel of the CMC with a pedal that sits about an inch lower than the brake pedal. Oh yeah, it's adjustable just like the stock setup with the option to go back to stock at any time, and this can be done on Evos.

I haven't done a road test yet as I am still waiting on brake parts to come, but it seems to work perfectly in the car without hydraulic fluid. At worst some fine tuning may be involved once the system is pressurized, but I'll keep everyone who's interested up to date. Saturday is when they come in, so I should have results by Sunday as to whether it's as good as it sounds on paper or not

hoino11

Okay, so it totally works the way that it should, but my god does it take effort to engage. The pedal sits about an inch below the brake pedal and that's with the full travel of the master cylinder. Moral of the story is if I were to try this again the new clevis pin hole would be about half way between where I drilled this one and where the old one was. I have to take it out again to thread-locker the jam nut as it keeps coming due to the fact that it's hard to get to and torque, so when I do I'll dimension it and post that