People told me when I bought a rare vehicle (especially here in Australia) that one day it would come back to bite me. The clutch cable in my Copen 659CC finally started to give up the ghost. My mechanic ordered a new one (from Japan); it took a couple of weeks to arrive. Fortunately he was able to loan me a truck, for free! (The story of how I went from driving a tiny Japanese Kei car to driving a huge utility vehicle is for another time!) Anyway, with the passing of time, it's all fixed now, but I find the "travel" of the clutch pedal is quite "short" - only a few inches from "not engaged at all" to "fully engaged". Because the problem with the clutch cable kind of slowly sneaked up on me, I don't remember what the pedal was originally like. Can anyone describe theirs? The car is once again a joy to drive, but it just feels a lot different to the way I remember it... Oh and I should add that he managed to do the repair without removing the entire dashboard, which seems to be the "official" way to do it.
The clutch, compared to other cars, is more like a button. It does not have much travel. You could check the measurements of the clutch pedal travel etc. with the data from the service manual and also check if the cable is adjusted properly See this video, its basically the same process:
Thanks for the feedback Salieri. I'll take that on board and just enjoy the new car feeling that I've got. It was so bad with the failing cable, grinding into first gear, hard to get into reverse at all, etc. To Daihatsu's credit, all that grinding didn't seem to damage anything at all, and only the cable needed replacement. He said that there's a panel that the cable comes through which had actually started to bend because of the pressure I was having to apply to get the clutch to work! Someone offered to buy the car from him while it was in the workshop. I'd have been interested to know what price, but I'm still very attached to my little Buzz. When I went to pick it up, the mechanic had a BMW Isetta up on the lifts, beautiful car.
