Clutch fork wire breaks!!

The aftermarket dogbone cables are junk.

The OEM one lasts forever so long as a higher pressure pressure plate isn't used; or the throwout bearing isn't binding on the retainer. The latter is VERY common on 2.3's. The retainer gets a groove worn into it and causes the bearing to bind on it, increases the load on the dogbone cable and then over time the dogbone cable breaks. The clutch pedal also gets harder to push.

The bolt fixes the dogbone cable problem but it doesn't solve the entire problem with the bearing binding on the retainer. That problem is solve-able (if that's a word) but not easily. The 2.3 bearing retainer is proprietary to the 2.3 T5. A regular V6/V8 bearing retainer doesn't fit correctly because the input shaft bearing is a different size. So you have two options. Find a NOS 2.3 bearing retainer, or you can brush up on your fab skills and get one for a toploader 4 speed. You have to piggyback it with the T5 retainer after removing the OEM retainer's "nose" (but you have to be careful not to get into the seal). Trim a little at a time, grind, test, grind test, sand, cuss, test fit, whatever but it just piggybacks over the top of the remainder of the T5's original retainer. Thats what I had to do with mine; it works good but it's tedious. I even called Astro and a few other places looking for a NOS or a "good" retainer; none found. Liberty said they'd sell me a new one but he didn't know that V6/V8 retainers are different. Tony knew about it. Turboford.org had instructions on how to mod the toploader retainer for piggyback use.