manual to hydraulic clutch possible?

[kensmith]

Is it possible to convert the 1978 manual clutch to a hydraulic clutch? Cost involved?

[pastaroni34]

Certainly!

Just takes some fab work.. you're looking at about $200 in parts (Master cyl, hoses/lines, hydraulic throw out bearing). The rest is just fabrication work to mount the above parts.

Don't bother with a slave cylinder to actuate the pivot arm. Get a hydraulic throw out bearing. Many aftermarked racing companies make them, many cars have them as original equipment too.

[Snoopy]

A spiderdriver in germany did it...

[mdrburchette]

Why do you want to do that? It's not like the clutch pedal on a Spider is hard to push. Are there other benefits to it?

[kmead]

It would be trading one maintenance problem for another in my mind.

It would require quite a bit of work to make parts fit. I would start with a Miata slave cylinder and master. There are others such as VW who have had hydraulic actuation for many years as other alternatives.

I can't say I would want to go that route unless there were some other mitigating reasons for chasing down that path.

[v6spider]

this is one that I have certainly gave some thought. The hydraulic clutch setup on the RX-7 is one that came to mind. Just like mentioned you would just have to fab up the fitment of it to the firewall and bell-housing. I have good faith in the rx-7 parts for reliability as I have had a couple rx's in my day. I never had any trouble with it as it is self adjusting and all the pieces are a metal. No plastic. The mid eighties chevy ones suck for the camaro as they are plastic. Same as ford....not sure about dodge wouldn't trust it either probably...LOL

cheers!
Rob

[mdrburchette]

We were planning to use a hydraulic setup like Jason was talking about (hydraulic bearing) with my race clutch and probably will on the X19 racecar, but I don't drive my Fiats enough to benefit from a self adjusting and the stock clutch is pretty easy to work.

[pastaroni34]

We use them for high performance clutches. The clutches we use have high spring rates, so it over stresses the pivot arm. An added plus is that you get a more direct feel, and you can change your pedal force by changing cylinder diameter.

For a stock clutch though, its not worth the time.

[mdrburchette]

Most definitely a plus on a performance clutch.

[v6spider]

The first version of my v6 spider had issues with the cable being reliable. The Chevy clutch for the t5 I was using is stiffer than the fiat one, so I think it was causing it to fail - Stock cable. One reason to consider going hydraulic.

Rob