When I depress the clutch pedal (feels like normal resistance - stock clutch) and turn the key, all of the electrical items come on, but the car will not crank. In other words, the car responds as if I'm turning the key WITHOUT depressing the clutch - except the pedal is to the floor.

This has been an intermittent problem that has gotten progressively worse over the last few weeks. In the past, I've solved it by stomping/pumping the clutch 4 or 5 times, at which point the car would crank normally when I turned the key.

Yesterday, it was having a harder than usual time cranking with multiple pumps of the clutch pedal. So I ended up putting my foot behind the clutch pedal to see if I felt anything unusual -I probably ended up kicking the wire/lever that attaches to the clutch pedal. Since then, the car has started up on the first attempt each time (cranked it 3 times since then).

8/19 EDIT: It has since started having issues starting again. Worked well for about a day, though. Now it's back to taking 5-6 attempts to crank each time.

This leads me to believe there is something loose (wire/switch?) behind the clutch and that it is not an issue with the clutch/transmission/electrical system.

Any of you more experienced folks have an idea of what it could be and what a permanent fix might work?

Thanks!

 

If it act the same exact way as when you don't press the clutch pedal then it's mostly a bad clutch pedal sensor.

You got 2 options:
- Try to clean the sensor on the pedal, and if it don't works you replace the sensor and hope it's that.
- Bypass the sensor which will allow you to be able to start the car without using the pedal... this option is the cheapest if you never forget to start on neutral... but could be dangerous if you often put the car in gear when you park it because if you forgot to put it to neutral and start it without using the pedal, the car will jump and you will damage your car and may hurt someone around the car...

When converting automatic to manual, we mostly use the option 2 because we don't have the wire going to the clutch pedal for the sensor ;-) but as you have the sensor already, I would try to clean/adjust it first or try to get an other sensor for cheap ;-)

If you can't find a sensor and your is really dead, then just cut the wires FROM and TO the sensor and connect them together bypassing the sensor and voila ;-)

Edit: The clutch sensor is just a connect/disconnect switch, if you plan to bypass the clutch pedal sensor, you may want to add an On/Off switch elsewhere because having the wire alwasy connected would allow the car to start but the car would think you are alwasy pressing on the clutch pedal, so you won't be able to use the cruse control without adding an On/Off switch