Thats how I took it, JT. Prissy is definitely the word for Hannah. She's all girlie girl with the nail polish, ear rings and all. She adores me and I adore her. She's my heart..

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transman

GM MASTER TECHNICIAN
SR. TRANSMISSION BUILDER

I would think that it would be very possible to lower the pedal, probably by proper adjustment of the clutch cable. It's possible that the cable may have been adjusted to compensate for disc wear.
A stiff pedal can sometimes be caused when the clutch is worn and the adjustment is made to compensate for it. This forces the pressure plate fingers down lower, meaning they're working against more spring tension.

A worn cable can also cause a stiff clutch action.

The manual transmissions are good ones in my opinion although they do get a bit of a bad rap now and then. My opinion is that the faulty transmissions are mostly owned by testosterone ladden young men who like to bang gears. (I was guilty of the same thing in my younger days, so.... :-)

The lighter flywheel could be done but there is a disadvantage. The advantage is that the engine will rev quicker. The disadvantage is that the engine will lose some of that low end grunt or pulling power since the rotating mass of the flywheel is lighter.

This was a hot trick on the old Harleys when they raced them way back when. They have a double flywheel with a common crankpin in the middle. The left flywheel is much heavier than the right so what they would do is replace the left flywheel with another right side wheel. This shaved off a bunch of rotating weight and would allow the engine to rev much quicker than stock.
Hope some of that helps in your decision.

As odd as it may sound, it's possible for a stutter like this to be caused by an ignition component; a corroded spark plug wire terminal at the plug or at the coil pack. I discovered this the (very) hard way many years ago on a 4 cylinder Ford. This car would start right up hot or cold, idle like a new sewing machine, and run like a champ down the road. The problem would occur at mid range speeds when the accelerator was backed off slightly or feathered lightly. The car would then stutter and this stumped me for a while before discovering it was caused by the coil wire where it plugged into the coil itself. It had a white scale on it and once cleaned the problem went away permanently.

It also could very well be the clutch assembly due to a burned flywheel or pressure plate. If they get a few burn marks on them a clutch can shudder but you will usually notice this when taking off from a dead stop; or least a subtle indication of it.

As to the lightened flywheel, I have no idea what your car would do with this as every car and engine will be different. Sometimes idle smoothness can be affected and the car may seem a bit sluggish when pulling an uphill grade due to a lightened flywheel. It does require momentum of the flywheel mass to override the combustion going on in the cylinders and provide that grunt to move weight. I would think a lightened flywheel would be more beneficial at high RPMs.
This should be carefully thought through before doing it and I would advise maybe talking to a few performance shops before making a modification like this that you may not be totally happy with.

(On a side note, I read a story a few years ago about a race car that FOMOCO built in the early part of the 20th century that had a 300 pound flywheel on a single cylinder engine. It redlined at something like 90 RPM and can you imagine the truckload of torque that thing put out from idle to 90!)

Wow, that's a rough couple weeks. Sorry to hear about your grandmother. And what a shame about your 17 year old neighbour, that's very young to go like that. Makes you realize you never know when your time will be eh? Gotta make each day count.

Hope you have a better rest of the month.