Folks,

Thank you for the replies. We had a wildfire here that could have been nasty if the winds went the other way (Google Corrales Romero fire)

So here's what happned. The clutch fork broke. I have it and will take a pic but every camera in the house is not here. By looking at the crack, there seems to be a crack that has been there for a while. I bough the truck last April 2011 and have put 16K miles on it. About 6 long interstate trips with draft horses on a goose neck, 2 200+ hay bale pick-ups from Colorado and at least 2 times a week horse trailer pulls, sometimes light sometime with the gooseneck. This is not a grocery getter by any means.

So the culprit was really the master cylinder that stopped the truck. It was leaking on the inside but the carpet seem to have been absorbing it, so I did not see it. The clutch fork may have hold for a while if the master cylinder hadn't given up.

Good news is that the clutch is relatively new, or at least the wear indicators look new, so me and the wife must be good manual drivers (we follow the downshift speed guide from the manual religiously :) plus no lugging specially when pulling). Mech took pictures and it is the one with multi springs rather than the OEM. Not sure if it was LUK or VALAIR. Flywheel was good condition too. I was prepared to spend the money to get a new clutch kit as needed.

So we dropped in the pre-bled kit as well (I asked specifically for that) and new upgraded clutch fork, throw out bearing, the plastic pivot point (how could Ford design this like this).

The thing shift's fantastic now. My mechanic is a 7.3 fan. Of course I am $800 bucks poorer today but I could be paying that as a monthly payment if I have a 60K new truck which I would be paranoid to do the jobs that we do.

Thank you everyone. Even though I did not do the job, at least I am getting more knowlegeable about it. I am actually going to replace the master and slave on my other car.

This site is really great. I can't thank everyone enough for helping a dummy like me.

FUBAR clutch!:ouch: