Car crapped out, Now what to do?

[offwhiteghost]

Summery: 87 eta's clutch issue, while driving clutch seems to have engaged and wouldn't fully disengage. Was doing it off and on and now is engaged all the time, can switch gears fine. Did a system bleed, took out and inspected the slave cylinder, pin is naturally in advanced position and is difficult to push back in to compressed position.

This seems odd to me, where is my problem?



Full Story:
Im slowly getting my 87 ETA on the road. For the last couple of weeks ive been driving it, trying to find issues before I dump shit tons of money in, ive been doing little things but in general its been good. I finished the timing belt(not a problem) yesterday and I thought I would send it out for a run.

Heres how it ended.

SSPX0193 by offwhiteghost, on Flickr

my brother was driving the e30, I was ahead in his car. I kept looking back to him far behind, wondering whats going on, he said he was missing gears but he figured it out. We get to the store(9 miles from house) where we were gonna swap cars and the e30 is dumping large amounts of coolent(I think one of the hoses was not properly tighted), let it sit for an hour, add half gallon of coolant and I set out home. About 2 miles from the store the clutch starts to disengage(peddle pressure is fine, shifting gears fine), added a little brake fluid but still nothing.

Turns out it was doing this on the way over it just snapped out of it.

Attempted to bleed the slave cylinder this morning(brake fluid black as tar) but cant get the bobbles out, peddle lost ALL pressure. I did this in my supra and it was pretty simple.

What did I kill, slave cylinder, clutch?

[ck_taft325is]

Check the brake booster itself.

It's an ETA?

Get a new engine.

[offwhiteghost]

Check the brake booster itself.

It's an ETA?

Get a new engine.

After driving around a supra for two years, kinda wanting some of that ETA mileage :), plus i have a bad habit of getting bored with my cars quickly.

the plane was to make a good DD, and after a year if i still love the e30, build a 2.7i (maybe turbo) and drop it in :D

how would i check the booster, fyi brakes seem ok.

[BMWerke]

are you loosing brake fluid? i used a tranny and slave cylinder out of an '86 325e for my swap and the clutch wouldnt disengage. come to find out the slave was squirting brake fluid in the bell housing. so the pedal was soft and went all the way to floor with out trying. $25 bucks later it was all good

[offwhiteghost]

the freaky thing to me is the clutch still had pressure, seemed normal, and switches gears fine.

now it has very little pressure after the attempted bleeding. is there a special way to do this on an e30? i just jacked it up, opened the bleeder valve pumped the clutch but wasnt seeming to pump out much fluid and now pressure is gone.

[BMWerke]

yea that sounds right, i always bleed the system with the brake reservoir cap off

[BMWerke]

and you should start to see bubbles flowing up, how thick was the "black fluid"?

[offwhiteghost]

and you should start to see bubbles flowing up, how thick was the "black fluid"?

pretty thick, alot of the color was very small metallic bits (i assume clutch).
the reservoir level is not going down much and not much is coming out anymore(supra is jut flowed out via gravity) im thinking clog in the system?

[McGyver]

the fluid is hydroscopic (attracts water) and it should be completely bled yearly. i doubt anyone here does it that often, but you probably should because the fluid is supposed to be clean enough to see through.

[jclar]

pretty thick, alot of the color was very small metallic bits (i assume clutch).
the reservoir level is not going down much and not much is coming out anymore(supra is jut flowed out via gravity) im thinking clog in the system?

You need new brake fluid. Any metallic bits in it will not be from the clutch itself as the fluid doesn't actually come into contact with the clutch. Flushing it is easy and doesn't take much time.

Sometimes air gets stuck in the slave cylinder. A pretty easy way to get it out is to
1. take the cap off of the brake fluid reservoir.
2. remove the slave cylinder but do not disconnect the hydraulic line.
3. with your hand push the slave cylinder pushrod in as far as it will go and release it slowly. Do this 5 or 6 times and there should not be any air left in the slave cylinder.

I'm not really sure if your problem is related to either the clutch master or slave themselves, if you have metallic bits I would assume so. They're not especially expensive, you may as well replace them, if they're the original ones they're gonna die at some point anyways.

[Lyrred]

u also have to raise the slave cylinder. I dont remember how high, but it must not be the lowest point.

[offwhiteghost]

u also have to raise the slave cylinder. I dont remember how high, but it must not be the lowest point.

You mean when you pull it off to bleed?

[offwhiteghost]

Please read summery on first post, how should slave cylinder behave?