It must be the install...I've heard opinions both ways on this and other clutches. My wife's 01 had a SPEC 2 in it that was VERY heavy. We decided to have a King Cobra installed after getting really tired of the stop and go commute of daily traffic. The installer said the SPEC 2 was not installed properly - (he didn't elaborate, but probably would have lost me anyway). He installed the King Cobra, Steeda 'blue' dbl pickup quad, adj cable and firewall adj. The pedal effort was MUCH lighter, but a new problem came up - the pedal was too high! He said that is typical with an aftermarket dbl pickup quad (don't know how true that is). But he offered to install the Steeda 'red' steep ramp, quick release quad for $30 and that would fix the problem. Know what? He was right! Now the pedal effort is just a little more than my stock clutched 02...and the pedal travel is nearly exactly the same.