I'v had half-a-dozen badly misadjusted slaves that had "considerable" pressure on them all the time. Being old & cranky, I just remove the lock bolt and nut, and carefully tap the arm off the splined bellhousing shaft. There's usually a loud snap! when the arm pops off, and its a real good idea to use a long driver and a small hammer to keep your hands away from the area. Also, ONLY hit the slave arm at its thick base where it clamps on the shaft. The arms are cast steel and if hit further out on the end, they will snap in two. There are no known spares. Doing it tis way, I have yet to break anything, and the splines on the arm and the shaft seem undamaged. Putting the arm back on, index the splines so there is NO preload, add a little oil before slipping it on, then adjust with the rod length. Give it a try but be precise with the hammering!
Well, got the slave out using my little screw extension devise to push the arm out a little, then the slave was loose enough to get the clip ring out and free the slave. All I heard from the wife all week..."free the slave!!! free the slave!!!. Now once I have it out, I find that the slave still had over 1/4 inch more travel room to push in further, so I know for sure the slave wasn't topping out. Also the trans arm swings free too, so no binding there either within the trans. Also took a measurement of the stop point position of the trans arm before and after removing the slave, and it is the same distance. So basically, when the slave was in the car, I could not push it in more even with great force (even with both screws out at the top). But now when I position the slave back in the car and hold the top of it in place with one hand as if it was hooked up, and manually push in the clutch arm with my other hand, the slave rod moves back into the slave much more than it does when it is hooked up (so by hand I have play, and when hooked in place I couldn't even hammer it in). Only thing I can think of is that maybe my trans arm is too verticle, and it is somehow getting some bind with the slave when the arm returns and pushes in the slave rod. Maybe too verticle creates an odd angle pushing in the slave rod. But this doesn't explain why it wouldn't push in when hooked up, but I do it all by hand as explained above and it pushes in.
Geeeeez finally mystery solved. When the slave rod was ground down some to shorten it a little, the rod lip that is close to the ground down end was binding at the contact point within the slave, so essentially this lip was not allowing the slave rod contact to rock fully when the clutch arm was returing. I compared the pivot distance of my old rod to this ground down rod just doing a test in my hand, and the difference is very significant. If I grind down that lip I believe it will now pivot fine. However, now I am contemplating a long throw anyway for two reasons: (1) it is much harder to press the clutch and for the life of me I coulnd't understand why I was experiencing pack problems again on my left side after my run with the car around the neighborhood...now I know, and (2) I have an aluminum master up front, and if the pedal is this hard to press with a long throw, then I wonder what kind of pressure it is exerting on the master. However, for anyone without back problems needing more throw, the distance acquired with a long throw slave is quite sigificant over a standard unit. See photo of the lip I am talking about at the tip of the rod, I think you can see which rod is old vs new