Clutch spring bushings will not go in!!

mymalade

New member
I ended up buying the little bushing kit to fix the squeaky clutch pedal and I opened up a can of worms. The spring is out, but I cannot get the little white circular bushings to go in the holes. I already broke 2 and had to reorder from the dealership. Is there a trick to getting them in? I thought maybe they were the wrong size but I ordered based off the vin and the parts guy says it's the only size they make
 
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This isn't exactly what you asked, but here goes:
I bought my 4Runner with 120K miles and have now put 100K miles of my own on it. Soon after acquiring it, I noticed a kind of a combo squeak/groan when actuating the clutch pedal. At first, I thought the groansqueak was coming from the pedal assembly, as I could feel it by hand in the pedal assembly. Turns out it came from the clutch assembly in the bell housing, and comes and goes even today.
While examining the pedal assembly, I noticed the spring-holding bushings were disintegrating. After researching the issue here on the forum, I decided I was tired of twisting myself under the dash to look at or work on the pedals. I applied a liberal amount of black molybdenum disulfide grease to the area where the bushing used to be, and have the little pigtail end of the spring just sitting in the bushing hole. It has kept working fine this whole time (12 years) and the spring end still hasn't eaten through the mounting hole where the bushing should be sitting. If/when the original spring eats away and breaks through the edge of the mounting hole, I'll just install one of the linear springs to the pedal and call it a day.
 
The bushings on either end of torsion spring are a light press fit into the pedal support bracket. Bracket in the car is a bit more difficult, bracket out of the car makes it easier. Careful squeezing with needle-nose with some sort of protection for the thin flange usually works. Or ditch it all together and go linear spring...
 
Thanks guys. This is even more of a headache now.. I was able to get the bushings in, but now cannot get the spring back in for the life of me. The video I watched from Timmy the toolman says the pedal assembly has to be removed to change the spring and I really really don't want to do that.
 
Lol at what a fiasco this is turning into. Multiple broken bushings and trips to the dealership.
Does anyone know a "hack" to get the spring back in while the assembly is still in the vehicle?

Also, it looks like I somehow smashed the cruise control switch that's on the pedal, so how do I go about installing the new one I just had to order?
 

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