SWGSSSlacker

Hello and Happy Thanksgiving.

Story line: Got the 1990 5.0 notch back together after a 2 month engine tear down and rebuild.
Installed new trickflow top end kit on a fresh 308 block, new clutch, new lots of stuff.
Anyhow, got the car road worthy and drove it to Florida for Thanksgiving....... a good road trip engine break in. Starting out on the way to my destination and everything was going good until about 500 miles in I hit stop and go traffic. Until this point I had no issues with the clutch and tranny but the tranny no longer wanted to go in to first or second gear without effort. Thd clutch pedal seemed to get harder to push down as well. The cable is not in any sort of bind and I haven't looked at the clutch adjustment to see if it has un-adjusted itself yet. Before my road trip I drove the car all over town to made sure all was good and had no issues. I did have a higher then normal idle but got that taken care of with adjustments.

SWGSSSlacker

Any ideas or suggestions?

dawson1112

Was it a stock cable, or an aftermarket adjustable one?

It could be that the cable was riding against the header and heating of the sheath and cable caused problems, or it is misaligned in the firewall.

Also possible that the throw out bearing sleeve and bearing are binding up.

SWGSSSlacker

It's a stock cable. The throw out bearing and sleeve are new.

SWGSSSlacker

The cable wasn't and hasn't been anywhere near the header except for the normal position.

SWGSSSlacker

Now that I think about it I did not put any kind of lubricant on the sleeve during reassembly. Should I have lubed it with something? If so what? Some sort of graphite spray?

dawson1112

If the cable has to much slack in it, it will make it difficult to shift because the clutch is not fully disengaging, but for the pedal to feel harder to push means something is not right. Check the clutch fork and make sure its still on the pivot ball. Take some slack out of your cable .