Cutch Tube repairs, See lots of these done, but WHY needed Options

[barefoot]

There's a plethora of repairs done to fix broken away clutch tubes, but there should never be any thrust load on this tube. It's just a conduit to route the cable thru the tunnel area.
Only thing i can think of is if the cable sheath in the engine bay is a little too long, then the fixing at the tranny bracket that also holds the pully to rotate the cable 180 Degrees is not adequately fixing the aft end of the sheath, then the thrust load pushes on the end of the clutch tube where it exits the firewall.
I'm getting the the point of re-installing the engine and then can check if the sheath is loading against the tube and not the aft end fixing.
Anyone been thru this already to help with this mystery ??
Inquiring minds want to know (IMG:style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

[Larry.Hubby]

Jeff has the right idea. The reason there is a guide tube for the clutch cable in the first place is that its path in the tunnel needs to be constrained so as to not interfere with the gearshift linkage, etc. This photo of the inside of the center tunnel, which is from a previous post by someone else shows this quite clearly:



The clutch cable guide tube is the slightly larger diameter tube running from its anchor point on the right near the far end toward its exit point at the near, firewall end and on the left-hand side. The bend in the middle means that when the clutch is depressed and there is tension on the cable, there are forces tending to straighten this bend, and consequently significant friction between the cable and the guide tube, which tends to pull the tube forward along with the cable.

This is also the reason that the clutch will seem to lose travel and fail to disengage if the guide tube's forward anchor point comes loose, even if the cable and the rear anchor point are both still OK. In this case, the first inch or two of clutch pedal travel just bends the guide tube to straighten its path slightly rather than moving the clutch throwout lever, because without both ends of the tube firmly anchored less force is required to flex the tube than to disengage the clutch.