Clutch issue - Need r3v's help

[Eddie Lives On]

Good day everyone,

I turn to you today in the hopes of avoiding a trip to my local mechanic.

I’ll start off by saying that it’s around -4F in the night and 15F during the day, so the clutch is always “slow” to react from a cold start. Takes a few minutes and then it feels good.

So last Friday, my clutch worked fine. I parked my car for the weekend and it stayed there from Friday 5:30pm to 7 O’clock this morning. As soon as I got in the car and depressed the clutch, I could feel something was weird because the pedal was loose. I expected it to be fine as the car would warm up, but it didn’t. So now it feels loose. So loose, I could push the pedal with my little finger. If I had 6 inches of travel before, and it were to grip at 2 inches in, now I need to depress it by 4-5 inches before anything happens. The clutch itself doesn’t feel weak and it gets through gears perfectly. Is there a spring somewhere? I would really like to fix this myself instead of paying $70/h. The car was in the parking so not much could have happened. I'm guessing something is loose and nothing really important broke.

Any idea what this could be?

Thanks r3v!

[jlevie]

Check for broken parts in the pedal and pedal box. But I suspect that the problem is a failing master cylinder.

[Eddie Lives On]

Check for broken parts in the pedal and pedal box. But I suspect that the problem is a failing master cylinder.

Thanks for the reply. I'll check my Bentley once I get home. I just googled a bit and it seems like a fault master cylinder will make the pedal go down, but not back up, which doesn't seem to be the case for my issue. Any idea how to diagnose if it's really the MC? FYI, it doesn't grind or anything when I get in and out of gears.

Thanks,

Ed.

[jlevie]

The problem could be in the bellhousing or it could be in the hydraulics. After making sure that there aren't any broken/cracked parts in the pedal box or pedal, I'd replace the master cylinder and see if that helps. If not the transmission is going to have to come out.

[Eddie Lives On]

Since there are no oil leaks on my floor mat so I'm guessing the slave could be the issue. There were leaks in the past on my parking space and they haven't cleaned yet but as I said, there's nothing inside the cabin. Is it safe to drive this way? I'm pretty sure I could replace the slave and bleed the system myself this weekend, but it would have to wait until the week.

I looked up Pelican's How-to and although this seems quite easy, there's a guy's comment that goes like this : the possibility of having the rod thrown out inside the bell housing if is not positioned correctly on throw-out bearing arm?" What about that? Should I really care about such information?

Thanks,

Edit: Can't seem to find it in my Bentley but which fluid to I need? Just regular brake fluid?

[jlevie]

When changing the slave, clamp the piston of the slave cylinder in the closed position and bleed with a pressure bleeder before installing the slave. You will be able to feel the piston contact the clutch fork when installing the slave. If the either the slave or master is bad, especially if the parts are original, replace both and the soft line.

[Eddie Lives On]

I'll surely have to fork out out $150 for what I assume will be 2 hours of work for both master and slave. Can I keep driving the car until the weekend and do the job myself at that point? That would save me $ for sure. I don't know if the parts are original and I'm at 105k miles as of today.

[Eddie Lives On]

This morning, the clutch was fine. I still took it to the mechanic but he found nothing. He checked the master and saw some oil, but the reservoir was full. Maybe that oil was from before my ownership, I don't know. It's back to full glory so I'm guessing it might have been just some air bubbles? I'll definitely add the master and slave to my to-do list for this summer anyway.

Thanks Jim.