More advice on LDA thingy on JX engine??

[sglcc]

Hi there, I'm wondering if the LDA for my 1.6TD JX is on the way out or not (& get ahead of the game for once & replace it before it actually breaks somewhere on the M4.)
There's a picy of the type here at Brickwerks http://www.brickwerks.co.uk/index.php/l ... td-jx.html

The van seems to work fine - it gets up to 65mph on the flat sometimes (no head wind) & the LDA works ok as far as I can tell from this old post Any advice on LDA thingy on JX engine??

However what''s not mentioned in the above post is how the rod moves. The rod in mine has 20mm of travel, which seems ok relative to the size of the pot it's part of, but after the first 8mm it gets a lot stiffer to move, in that I have to use 2 hands rather than one to pull on it. I did think this may be as the membrane passes the sticky out flange on the pot but that's a complete guess.

Any ideas if this stiffness is normal or not ?
(The pressure test mentioned in the post was fine so the membrane seems to be holding ok.)

Any advice greatly appreciated. Thanks