80s Ford Escort Clicking clutch!

It'll be the quadrant at fault.

Ford I believe still sell them. Anembo do an alloy one which will never die again. It comes with its issues however. They are that you'll need a MkV clutch pedal with the allen screw adjuster and you'll lose the auto adjustment. It will however outlive the car and save you changing the hateful thing again.

An old trick used to be stamp on the clutch pedal fast and hard to see if you can get the ratchet part of the quadrant to jump over the broken tooth to the next good one by temporarily stretching the clutch cable due to the speed and ferocity of the pedal action. I would only attempt this with the new quadrant to hand as it can just break the next tooth off and then you have no clutch. i used to take the steering wheel off, cover and one nut and remove the drivers seat, 4 bolts so you can lie on your back, feet on back seat and head in foot well gives you much better access to do the job, pry bar the lever on top of the gearbox back carefully un hook the cable, swap quadrant, set in slackest position and pry bar the lever back on gearbox and re-connect the cable, a bit awkward but easily a DIY job.

Hi Chris, They are not too difficult to change if you are supple. I would change that as soon as you can. I had one in the 90's and when sitting at a road junction with the clutch down waiting for a gap in traffic the clutch would fully engage and I lurched into the road narrowly avoiding traffic. This happened on more than one occasion. Norman

it depends if you don't mind laying on your back in the footwell trying to do funny angles with your head whilst beneath the dashboard. I know the old school garages hate doing them here. I don't know of many people saying they're OK to change. Yes, it's simple but not where the location is.

Just reviving this thread as I still have this Car and guess what... the quadrant is slipping and banging a lot again. I've bought two "new" ones off ebay and had a look yesterday about fitting it.... God it looks a pain in the ! ( I let a garage do it last time)

So looking at the haynes it says unclip the clutch cable from the gearbox end, take off the pin from the end of the clutch pedal/any shims, Undo the cable from the pedal end and I guess it should all slide off? In the manual it mentions disconnecting the brake pedal from the servo rod and sliding both pedals out... I cant see why that would be necessary ?? It looks like just the clutch would come off on its own?

Also, I didnt get stuck into it yesterday as I was having a nightmare getting access to the end pin due to the heater matrix air ducts. I'm considering doing this tomorrow or Wednesday but trying my best to not be without a working Car. Anything else I should know about getting this clutch pedal off? Thats my main concern, this pin at the end and dismantling too much or not enough to get the thing off.