I've searched the forum for any opinions, thoughts or solutions on this but found none, so here goes.

Does anyone know in pounds force or newtons what the clutch pedal effort of a stepdown would nominally be? My clutch pedal seems very high as compared to other cars of the period. I've installed the clutch overcenter spring and could add more tension to lower the clutch effort, but would like to know what those who have driven the cars and compared think. To me, the pedal effort is noticeably larger than other cars. Perhaps because of the wet clutch spring rates? I'll be measuring the pedal force in the next few days to get an absolute value.

My 50 Commodore includes Supermatic, which means the factory did not install a clutch overcenter spring to lower clutch effort for the driver. My technical conclusion of why this is done has two parts: 1) Hudson had planned and hoped that if customers were going to spend money on Supermatic to get the pseudo automatic function, they typically wouldn't be using the clutch as often as for a pure manual transmission. However, that alone does not seem to warrant the cost savings of an inexpensive spring and mount while incurring the larger force the driver must exert on the clutch pedal. So there must be another reason, which my engineering background led me to: 2) The supermatic system pulls on the clutch pedal via a vacuum actuator which is design to be able to achieve two critical tasks: a) provide sufficient force to disengage and engage the clutch and b) do it smoothly such that gear changes and starts/stops are smooth. So, having an overcenter spring that changes the amount of force being applied once the overcenter angle is reached would cause differences in the rate of clutch engagement and disengagement. My conclusion is the existing overcenter spring caused problems, so the engineers proposed to remove it and the marketing people had no choice but to accept the consequence if they really wanted a near automatic transmission in a Hudson.
Pat