They probably had you remove the spring because the pedal effort may be reduced enough from the stock effort that they were afraid that there might not be enough upward force to overcome the spring..... law suit protection mode...

 

That's exactly why. Diaphragm clutches require a fraction of the effort that long-style clutches do to actuate. In a diaphragm clutch, you only have to overcome the action of the belleville spring, which is aided by the leverage of the clutch fingers. In a long-style clutch, you have to overcome each of the very powerful coil springs spaced throughout the clutch cover.

 

Update: I wanted to give everyone who has given guidance on this problem an update.

Once Starfury mentioned that my descriptions were two different problems, clutch or misfire, I began to go through the ignition system. What I eventually found was a loose ground wire inside my Pertronix billet distributor. There is a heavy gauge white wire the runs down through what I would call the round base plate under the red ignitor box, to a screw that mounts onto the mounting flange of the vacum advance diaphram. I happened across this as I was checking the timing setting and my hand touched the vacum diaphram case. The engine shut itself off. Once I poped off the distributor cap, I noticed the ground screw sitting upwards, with a gap between the head of the screw and the metal plate. The white ground wire had enough space there to allow movement with ease. Since the "base plate" covers the screw head and does not allow a screw driver to come in from the top, I used a thin set of needle nose to try and tighten it down. Unfortunately, the threads in the base seem to be stripped (which is why it probably came loose to begin with) so I was only able to get the screw "just snug" to ensure some level of contact. Afterwards, I did take the car out for a test drive, and at least for that ride, I did not experience the problem as described at the start of this thread!! I hope to take the distributor out sometime this week so I can disassemble it to get at that screw, tap the threads, and get a solid ground again.

In regards to the clutch, I removed the spring as mentioned by "pushrodpower". Everything in regards to clutch linkage is new and installed as it came from the factory. (including the clutch fork spring) I do have a factory service manual as mentioned by Starfury and followed the proceedure to the best of my "interpretation". Hopefully it is pretty darn close to where it needs to be.

Thanks to all that stepped up and contributed thier ideas!!! There is always something to learn!!

 

Great to hear! Happy driving