I have a 70 Duster 5 speed, I need to remove the over center spring, how do you remove it??

just stick a few flat tip scewdrivers thru each coil rung, after a few screw drivers the spring will have grown in length that you can move the pedal and lift the spring off,...the reverse of this tecnique also helps install it also,....


Mike

With the pedal in the up position you can stack some washers between the coils on both sides of the spring. Push the pedal down and it should take enough tension off that you can remove the spring and keep your fingers!
Dan

Removed mine using the washers.I left them in so if I want to reinstall it it will be easy.Rocky

I assume the reason for removing it is that you now have a diaphragm clutch and have been told that the spring must be removed. This is only partly true. It is possible to overcenter a diaphragm clutch and having the spring in place makes this more likely to happen. However if you use a positive stop on the clutch pedal than you can keep the spring in place and have a much lighter clutch pedal, similar to most modern cars. All you need to make an adjustable stop is a connecting nut welded to the clutch pedal and a bolt and a jam nut. Maybe a dollar or so at your local hardware store. Keep in mind that if you do remove the spring than the throwout bearing will ride [ lightly ] on the clutch fingers all the time. You will still need some sort of spring to prevent this. I still have the overcenter spring in my car [ with a positive stop ] and my clutch does NOT hang up. I shift at 6000 rpm under full throttle without problems.

Have you got a picture of your jam nut in place?

Sorry my computer skills [?] are pretty limited. If it weren't for friends I wouldn't have a sig pic or an avatar. Basically you weld a connecting nut to the lower part of the clutch pedal and than screw a jam nut on to a bolt which than screws into the connecting nut with the head of the bolt facing the firewall. Adjust the bolt so that the head of the bolt contacts the firewall when the clutch is fully released, but no more than necessary to do that. Tighten the jam nut in this position and you're good to go.

The short answer is no. At least it wasn't on my car. I tried it both ways. With the overcenter spring removed and with it in place. With the spring removed you could see with the bellhousing dust cover removed that the throwout bearing was resting on the clutch fingers. FWIW without the spring clutch effort was similar to a heavy duty Borg & Beck with the spring in place. If you think about it the spring in a diaphragm clutch is really kind of a big Belleville washer. If it's pushed too far it could be overcentered in much the same way as a bell crank linkage. This would result in the clutch pedal staying on the floor. In fact one of the reasons diaphragm clutches got a bad rep. for this was because GM used a lot of poorly designed diaphragm clutches in the 50's & 60's. It didn't take the Chevy guys too long to figure out that Chevy and Chrysler had the same bolt pattern for their clutches and that the Mopar Borg & Beck clutches would fit in a Chevy. Newer aftermarket diaphragm clutches are less likely to hang up and with a positive stop you can prevent it entirely.