The clutch-pedal is stuck…

When picking up the vehicle at the Toyota auto repair shop in Bogota after changing the clutch, the service representative explained that the clutch would surely feel a little soft in the beginning…. Frankly, this was the first time ever that I get a new clutch installed, so I did not really have a basis for comparison. Based on this, I assumed the “soft clutch feeling” was normal and that things would improve when broken in. And, maybe naively, trusting the Toyota quality assurance, we started our trip south. However, relatively soon after starting, the clutch pedal literally got stuck at the bottom and suddenly did not return up at all when shifting. Stuck in traffic on a 3-lane highway, there was nothing to do – after placing the warning triangles behind the car – but quickly tie a thin rope around the clutch pedal and pull it up by hand for each shift. Naturally, not a durable solution for the long drive ahead, but at least it got us out of our first problematic episode.  

At this stage we were close to Ribera (close to Neiva thermal waters), and it was about 18:00 when we checked in at the thermals. We camped in the parking lot and quickly, asked the locals for a mechanic. Half an hour later he arrived, and we agreed on a service of the clutch pedal next morning. It soon turned out that the clutch pedal was missing a helical extension spring (an OEM Toyota part), which must have been demounted and subsequently left uninstalled at the Toyota auto repair shop in Bogota. While not able to find an original replacement, the mechanic in Ribera, in a very typical and ingenious Colombian manner, found an innovative solution by demounting other parts of the original clutch-pedal and replacing the OEM-spring with a standard spring from a hardware-store. Incredibly, this emergency repair served its purpose and off we went in direction of the trans Amazon highway.

And knock on wood, the clutch-pedal functioned well after this emergency repair. In any case, I continued worrying about how long the thin unoriginal spring would last and for safety I continued keeping the rope handy, ready for use, just in case.