2015 Tacoma Clutch Pedal "Croak, Creak, Squeak" (interior) - FIX

I have a 2015 Tacoma 4cylinder 5spd manual. Did a lot of reading today (mostly old threads) about squeaky clutch pedals and figured out how to stop my annoying croak. I hope this is helpful. Fix takes a total of 5-10 minutes with your hands a cell phone light.

Couple of notes:

A. This information relates specifically to a clutch croaking, creaking, or squeaking taking place inside the cabin. There are other threads discussing the 1st Gen and 2nd Gen issues with squeaking in the linkage/boot/pushrod on the clutch slave cylinder.

B. In my case the fix was easy, no guarantee this works for all situations. I will do my best to be clear in what I did and how "I think" the problem is occurring. This is my first post here I believe, so my apologies if I'm breaking any rules.


Symptom: When releasing my clutch pedal, at about 80% travel out a croaking would occur all the way until the clutch was fully released. It would happen right at the grab point when you are slowing your foot down so the croak was very irritating.

Solution:

1. Crawl under your dash and locate the assembly that is attached to the back of the clutch pedal. You should see a rod coming from the master cylinder, a nut on the rod, and then a big silver cylinder above the nut. The cylinder has a knuckle that goes into the back of the pedal.

Problem: This knuckle has some sort of ideal groove or sweet spot on the back of pedal. I'm not sure if there is a physical detente for the knuckle, I assume there is but hard to verify without removing the pedal for closer inspection.



2. Apply some light pressure outward (towards driver seat) on the clutch pedal, grab the silver cylinder the knuckle is part of and twist it slightly left and right.

3. Let go and try the pedal with your foot to see if the squeak is cured. If it is, sweet! If not, try moving the shaft in some other positions in the back of the pedal. Just repeat step #2, gently moving the position of the knuckle and testing. I feel like there is a specific spot for the knuckle to rest and if it gets out of line it squeaks; just have to find that correct spot. It took me all of one attempt to get mine lined up and working quietly.

If you can't get the squeak to clear, it may be coming from a different location, but at least you can potentially rule this out.



NOTE: This issue occurred for me a month after owning my brand new Tacoma. I did brief reading online, twisted on the master cylinder rod on the back of the pedal and all was good for 10 months. Then, the noise started again and a simple twist did not work so I dug deeper, crawled under the dash further, and tried to understand the problem more clearly. I think I've got a handle on what's actually happening now so I wrote this guide. I'm sure the issue will come back. I'm pretty sure any sudden stutter or accidental release of the clutch could cause the knuckle to jump and land in a "squeaky spot" or at least out of the ideal groove.


Thanks to this thread: https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/squeaky-clutch-pedal.12837/ for helping me sort mine out. I used the fix reported in post #13, but I found it hard to pull all the information together which is why I posted here. There was a TSB for 05-06 Tacoma's for replacing a clevis sub-assembly (I've been calling it the knuckle), but I'm not sure that would necessarily fix the issue I had. In any case, I've attached the TSB for your review; it helped me understand the assembly a bit better.

Thanks for reading and I hope this helps someone else!

 

Nice write up. Also if your truck is under warranty the dealer will replace all that stuff. But now I know when it starts up again what to do

 

Had the clutch TSB done last November (replaced either slave or master cylinder, can’t remeber which and the clutch pedal itself). Worked great until two months ago - back to the same old squeak.

 

I did the same TSB, they replaced the cylinder and everything, still creaked. Ended up finding the same thing you posted and fiddled with it until it stopped. So far so good. Excellent write up though, I wish that this existed when I was trying to figure out what was going on.

 

Yeah, it's a shame the TSB did not completely fix the issue for a lot of people. I read a lot of similar stories when I was searching around for this. I think there is just an inherent flaw with the design on how that master cylinder rod mates with the back of the clutch pedal.

Mine is still operating quietly for now. If the noise returns on my truck I will try and identify what might have caused it. It is odd that the creak/squeak is absolutely terrible and then with a small adjustment of this rod it's completely gone. My best guess is that an awkward or sudden release of the clutch could knock that rod out of the intended/non-squeaky location.

When it comes back for you guys does it start small and grow louder/worse? Or does it go from no-squeak to terrible?

 

If I remember right (I've been in Afghanistan for 8 months so haven't driven the Taco much) it would come back randomly. Sometimes it would start quiet and then get louder sometimes it would just be loud. I thought the weather affected it but I think that was just me trying to make something up to make sense. It was exactly as you described though, a creaking that would always happen right when the clutch would start grabbing. If you pushed it in and out super fast when the truck wasn't running it wouldn't make much of a noise, only when you were slowly releasing it as it caught. Horrendously annoying.

 

I had the same groan within a few thousand miles on my 2015 manual trans Taco and indeed figured out I could reach down and rotate that head and it would go away for a while,

Ended up mentioning it at my second oil change courtesy of the dealer and they ended up replacing the whole clutch pedal assembly, Wild as it’s almost all plastic and such.

Noise is gone and I’m now at @32K.

 

Hate to revive the dead but just wanted to say this 'trick' worked on my 2020 MT as well! Thanks OP for sharing, glad I tried this before trying to grease everything. Looks like Toyota has not fixed the issue still...

I'm wondering if anyone found a way to lock the rod in position so it can't rotate itself back to a noisy position? Mine only made noise when releasing the pedal slowly from the floor.