for future searching, this is the easiest thing in the world, but it has to be done right.
That little pawl is being held on by a nasty little clip that pokes straight through the pawl, and clips onto the back around the pedal assembly upon which it slides onto.
The way you do it is to slide a flat tipped screwdriver (grab a LONG one) along the back side of the pawl. If you shine a flash light up there, you'll see what I'm talking about...here is a picture
there you see on the right side of the picture the little clip that essentially hugs the metal bracket that it's attached to. sliding a screwdriver straight up and behind it will pop that clip off of the bracket. However, this clip is still being held on by a thin wire that goes straight through the plastic. You can JUST see a little sliver of it poking out in the above picture. Here is a better pic. After you pop the clip off the bracket, reach up with your finger and push the metal bar through the plastic as much as you can. Now that the spring isn't attached to the pedal assembly anymore (except for resting on the shaft) the spring will rotate a little and the thin wire will come slightly out.
From here, all you do is slide the pawl as far off the shaft that it'll go, then push the clutch pedal all the way to the floor. This will bring the pedal assembly at the point of clearance to slide that fat pawl off. The pawl will only come off one way...rotate the plastic pawl on the shaft itself with the clutch pedal depressed, and it'll slide right off the shaft effortlessly. DO NOTE that that pawl will NOT come off without it being rotated to the exact position. This position is not hard to find, you just twist..but if you're not doing this, this is part of your problem. This is another reason why just prying it off won't work, as you're prying it off in a position that is non-compliant for sliding off the shaft.
This sounds difficult, but if you don't do it this way, you'll be ****ing with screwdrivers and crowbars for hours. this was is simple, screw driver, twist, push, slide, rotate, push clutch pedal, pop off quadrant.
drilling anything is silly, and a complete waste of time. Install of the new quadrant is simple...push the pedal to the floor, and slide it onto the furthest shaft first, then the other shaft.
this is a copy of my article that I got the pics from
http://www.thompsontransmission.com/techarticles/clutchcableadjustment.html
And I had the pedals out of the car.
