Creaking Clutch Pedal in 2013 - Not Squeaky - Creaky

About a month ago, say 2500km, I also had a loud creak, vs squeak. Oddly enough it went away on its own. It seemed to be from the foot pad on the pedal.

 

Yes. When the creak is bad, it is so loud that you can "feel it". I have 11,700 miles.

 

My clutch creaks when it's warm inside the cab. any suggestions on what may cause that or what I can do to fix the problem?

 

I wrote this a while back when I was dealing with this issue. Basically, lube it. Here's how I did it: http://rallyways.com/6942/clutch-pedal-lube/

 

Greetings all. I have come to post that, for me anyway, I finally tracked down the cause of my 2010 Tacoma clutch creak! I'm hopeful that I can save someone from the frustration I have dealt with for the last few years.

What creak? Well, for me, the pedal would creak quickly on the down-stroke and slowly at the top of the up-stroke (there are videos on youtube of "tacoma clutch creak" that show exactly the sound). If I fiddled with the piston that the pedal actuates (twist it left or right) it would go away for a time so I thought it was the teflon bit at the top of the piston. The problem was, no matter how much I messed with it, eventually the creak would come back (and I know better than to lube teflon . I took it to the dealer who said "what creak". Twice. Seriously. I would have paid to have it gone. My Taco wasn't even under warranty... but I'm getting off-subject.

What fixed it? Well for me it was lubricating the "faces" of the spring-coils on the main spring attached to the clutch. If you look under the dash, up above the clutch pedal, you will see an spring shaped kindof like this #^# (sorry I'm too lazy to post a real pic, but there's one of a 2011 on someone's photobucket: http://s784.photobucket.com/user/yoytoda/media/Tacoma/080311003.jpg.html (credit to yoyotoda, thanks for the image!)).

The issue is that the spring "faces" are very close together and, over time, rub and wear/gather dust and grit. To resolve the problem I put a rubber glove on and grabbed a small palm full of white lithium grease (more like 2 fingers worth), then slathered it all over all surfaces of the spring itself, working the clutch up and down to ensure the grease made it between each spring-coil. Once the grease was worked in the extremely annoying clutch creak was GONE!

I can't tell you how happy I have been this week with my totally silent and vibration-less clutch pedal! Just a few cents of disposable glove and lithium grease have handled it! I'm not 100% sure lithium grease is the best choice (I'm a bit worried for summer. Would hate grease drips on my shoes) but for now (early spring) it has been mess free. If anyone knows of a better lube choice please post it!

So, why did it take me so long? Why did the Toyota mechanics not resolve it right away? I think that it is an unexpected source of the sound. For me I had to look at a diagram and "recommended lubrication points" in a TSB before I realized "they don't train them to lube the spring faces!" Then, honestly, I just gave it a try. The sound didn't seem to come from the spring. The vibration couldn't be felt in the spring. The whole thing didn't make sense other than that the rough and (eventually) dirty spring coil was very tightly wound. Thankfully I was finally crazy enough to just try anything I could think of and it paid off!

Hopefully this post gets to someone else losing confidence in the quality of their Tacoma. Mine's been great to drive with the clutch creak being the one, very in my face (or foot) exception. I even started to doubt my choice to go with the manual vs. auto, since the auto wouldn't have this issue!

Sorry for the wall of text. I tend to gush when I'm happy, and this simple thing has made me so happy!

Good luck!