plagued

Firstly, I've been trawling the forum for a little while, and it's been very helpful indeed! Cheers everyone.

Little bit of background. I've had an 04 rx8 for 8 months now, high mileage 120k, good mazda service history, nice clean car, no mods, runs great, starts hot or cold no problem.
Since I've had it the main issue has been the clutch (I've put up with it for 8 months as I was waiting for the engine to explode and apart from a coil failing and the Cat collapsing it's been perfectly reliable, so I think I might invest some time into the issue.

It had a new clutch fitted about a year and a half by a Jaguar garage, the following mazda service check-up (I've got a shed load of paperwork) states that they noticed the clutch was producing a burning smell.

Now the clutch is fine if you pull off really carefully, even in hours of stop start traffic, and engages well, so no slippage at all, but if you pull off in any sort of spirited way say 3k the smell of burned clutch soon fills the car. Reversing is almost impossible without the burning smell.

Now there's also a slight judder to the clutch, more noticeable in reverse. I can hear a difference in the clutch when released, but not as loud or metallic as some of the failed release bearing vids on youtube.

So has anyone experienced this, I'm unsure if this is a bearing issue, flywheel problem, incorrectly fitted clutch or possibly a faulty clutch kit.
any suggestions on how to narrow down what the issue is would be greatly received.

Cheers

HiFlite999

iTrader: (2)

Broken clutch pedal bracket. Check the threads.

plagued

I did a quick check a while back, the clutch pedal doesn't look off set like any of the images of the broken bracket, and depresses fine. I'll crawl about in the footwell later with a torch and have a good look at it, but the clutch definitely disengages OK and also engages ok, it's just the bit in-between that's got the issue

I also forgot to mention, that it has on a couple of occasions had a little difficulty engaging reverse, but that has literally been twice in 8 months...