I can press down about an inch on the accelerator on my '71 220D before the engine revs up. This makes shifting the manual transmission and coordinating clutch realease smoothly with engine speed, hard to do. All the mounting points on the firewall are secure, I adjusted the accelerator pedal as per the CD and I've lengthened the linkage rods as much as possible to take up the slack. It seems the the first rod coming off the firewall is spring loaded for some reason and this is where the freeplay is comming from. Can this spring be eliminated?