I’ve got a 96 xj country that the previous owner did a manual swap on. When I bought it the clutch was very stiff and the throw out bearing was a little noisy. I installed a complete new LUK clutch kit. It was still stiff but no more throw out bearing noise. I replace the master cylinder with a LUK aluminum one and bled it. It got much better but soon started sticking a little in release. So I check the clutch pedal after reading about the linkage arm bending. It’s not bent it has been weld reinforced by someone previously. So I got another aluminum MC forget the brand but was supposed to be good quality. It seemed good at first but after driving it a bit it started acting up also. Then tried a complete MC and SC kit with braided stainless steel line. They MC is plastic but seemed to perform better but it too has started no releasing smoothly. I can feel it in the pedal and even hear the spring in the MC. I e noticed a lot of misalignment of the MC rod to the pedal. The MC sits high enough that there’s an angle on the rod down to the pedal. Is this typical ? I don’t think it could be mounted much lower due to the fuse box. Any ideas what’s goin on. Are MC’s just a crap shoot these days? I’m about to try a mopar unit but not sure what’s happening.

 

I disassembled one of the previous MC’s that were installed. There’s definitely a problem with how high it’s mounted and the misalignment of the push rod. There’s a retaining ring under a snap ring that holds the rod in. The rod is dragging on the ring and is scaring the rod and deforming the ring. For whatever reason when they did the manual swap they did t just drill the firewall at the dimples. It looks like the cut out a square section and fabricated a plate to fit the MC and welded it in and it is too high. It could have been mounted a little lower. Doing research on MC issues I found an old thread on a Comanche forum where someone was having MC issues after apparently drilling the firewall incorrectly. Someone recommended putting a small bend at the end of the pushrod as an easy fix. It required removing the pushrod and reassembling the MC. I did this and will bleed it tomorrow and report back. I looked at another factory manual xj today and it had some misalignment but not as much as mine. So I’ll report back once I find out if this resolves the issue.