I recently replaced the clutch on my 2015 JK. Used a Luk clutch and replaced the pilot bearing, TOB (National) fork and pivot balls and re-surfaced the flywheel while we were in there.

A couple weeks later, the clutch petal started getting hard to push randomly...may one in every 10 times it's depressed. Also isn't shift gears very smoothly. Since then it's started to happen more frequently (no rthym or reason to when it happens). I bleed the slave cylinder and thought that did the trick, but it got even worse after driving for 15 minutes. My next move was going to be replacing the slave, but everything I've read about a bad slave cylinder is a soft clutch pedal, not hard.

Thoughts? Worth trying to bleed it again? Master cylinder? What about lubing the pedal linkage?

Thanks!

 

When tranny is warm and idling in neutral is it hard to get into gear IE should be silky smooth to place in any gear?

 

There is not much within the internal clutch parts to cause the pedal to be stiff. The only thing I could think of in terms of the clutch parts would be if a clutch disc spring came out and got lodged below the diaphragm spring. It is more likely that the operating system has friction. It is odd that it happened right after a clutch change. Did you lubricate the release bearing guide tube and pivot ball? Did you inspect the guide tube to be sure there weren't grooves that the bearing may snag on? That's all I can think of at the moment.

 

Yes, I lubed the guide tube and pivot ball. Didn't see any grooves.

The weirdest thing about it is that its totally random when it's hard to push or smooth as butter. No rhyme or reason 🤷

I cleaned and lubricated the spring on the clutch pedal, which seems to have helped a little.