By Tony K
Sad to say the clutch fork design on a BJ 60 is not the best. Not only is the fork prone to some very specific wear, short of pulling the tranny there is no easy way to remove the fork to fix it. But don’t despair as there is an easy way to work around this and it doesn’t require any sort of major tear down. At worst all you will have to do is remove the slave cylinder. And you only have to remove the bolts that hold it on, you can leave the lines attached so you don’t have to bleed it when you reinstall it.
So just what is this wear that most of us with high mile BJ’s can expect? Due to how the slave cylinder joins up with the fork there is a tendency for the clutch rod to wear it’s way all the way through the fork. And once this happens, you no longer have the ability to control your clutch. In other words, no way to release the pressure. Unlike the clutch in a FJ that has a rod with a nut on both sides, the clutch rod in a BJ is really small and it’s diameter just about asks it to wear out the hole in the fork.
For the most part the picture explains the fix. Right against the fork is an acorn nut with a clearance hole in it that allows the clutch rod to pass right through it. This creates a new pivot between the rod and the fork. But to keep the acorn nut in place I had to add a second set of jam nuts (The original jam nuts are next to the boot). That rod in the pic is a stock size one that came with my new slave cylinder. And no need to worry about the rod falling out should you lose that clutch spring, the rod passes through the acorn nut and about 3/8ths of an inch passes into the fork or about 9mm for my north of the border friends. Lose the spring and the rod stays in place.
This fix makes it so all you have to do is thread on some nuts instead of some long winded fabrication of a custom part. The only fab you have to do is drill one hole through an acorn nut. So for cost and effort this has to be one of my simpler fixes. And be sure to remember that this particular fix is only relevant to the clutch fork on a BJ 60. Might be other diesels as well but gassers use a different fork connection.
