Clutch won't bleed

[Jarrett]

Alright, I'm trying to get this issue sorted out with my car. This weekend I was driving it and while I was at an intersection the clutch pedal decided it would not be coming back up. Basically I was stuck at the intersection until I could just force it into gear and go. My girlfriend's house was a couple of miles away and I just tried to get there. It limped but I made it. I tried to bleed the clutch there with her holding pressure on the pedal. I didn't have a reservoir or anything with me so I just had her press the pedal while I opened the bleeder.

It seemed that I was able to get it a little better because the pedal returned and I could shift into gear again with the engine running. I tested it out by going back and then forward and I didn't have trouble shifting so I let it be until morning.

Morning comes and I go to leave and you can feel that I don't have full control over the clutch. I reverse out of my girlfriend's driveway and the flywheel starts to drag and the engine shutters. DI make it to work (barely) a few blocks down from her house and park it. With the engine running I cannot get it to go into gear. The pedal is on the floor and won't come back up unless I pull it up. I got a bleeder reservoir(I have a vacuum pump system at my parent's house 2 hours away) so that has been some help as far as visibility is concerned. Honestly, though, if my girlfriend presses on the clutch and I crack it reseal it and have her let off it just lets out a steady stream. No air bubbles seem to be present. I also cannot improve the pedal action this time.


Does anyone have any idea? I may just go order a master and slave cylinder for my car and throw it on there.

[Amiss]

Check out my thread
http://www.cb7tuner.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=194184

Reverse bleeding fixed it for me.

[Losiracer2]

what does your slave look like? wet? leaky?

what about your CMC? on the driver side foot well, look up, is it relatively dry?

What i usually do is take a gatorade bottle, drill a hole in it and run some clear hose all the way to the bottom and fill about a 1/4 of the bottle with fluid.

Make sure the hose is about 1-1.5 feet long outside of the bottle so you can set it down near the slave cyl. bleeder somewhere, preferably below so the fluid won't creep back up.

but yeah, its easier with two people, I'm usually the bleeder operator while my friend is inside pushing the pedal under my DOWN/UP command.

[Jarrett]

The master and the slave are both bone dry.

Amiss, the car is on the side of the road at my job's headquarter building right now and I don't have an airline long enough to reach a bleeder on the caliper and the bleeder on the slave. I'm going to look into some tools to reverse bleed it, though. I guess I'm taking today off to solve this. Thanks for the help.

[oyajicool]

This is what I do and did on my CMC and Slave cylinder change.
1) Have a 1/4 clear tygon tubing long enough to reach from slave to reservoir.
2) Hook up the tubing, one end to bleeder valve.
3) Fill reservoir with fluid.
4) Open bleeder valve wide.
5) See fluid coming out of bleeder.
6) Let open end of tubing go lower than the level of reservoir.
7) See fluid filling up the tubing, fluid and air.
8) Close the open end of tubing with finger when fluid reaches.
9) Now bring that end to reservoir and submerge it in fluid.
10) Secure the tubing so it will not come out.
11) Go in the cockpit and pump clutch pedal slowly. Make sure the reservoir is filled with fluid all the time.
12) Watch fluid and air moving in side the tubing.
13) Continue pumping till there's no air in the tubing.
14) Once you know there's no air, close bleeder valve.
15) Test the pedal to see if it works good or not.
16) Repeat pumping with bleeder open if it is soft.

Now it seems like there's a lot of steps, but it's not that much and not difficult.

You don't need any one helping you. I do this alone all the time to my brake system as well. Worked every single time since whenever I started this method in 80's. I really don't see why it doesn't work on other people.

[Jarrett]

Alright, it's done and driving. It turned out that it was only my clutch slave cylinder leaking. I'm telling you it was bone dry the entire time I was checking but I squeezed the boot and brake fluid shot into my eye. That concluded I had an internal leak. Why there wasn't enough pressure to leak out of the boot is far beyond me. Anyway, I'm back on the road. I had to buy another MightyVac hand pump since my other one is at my parent's house, but that's fine. Thanks for the help.

[alan lx]

Jarret- think i am having the same issue on my daughter's Ford Ranger. Been trying to look at last couple days and other stuff, work etc. keeps tying up my schedule. So I am planning to get on it tomorrow evening. Yay.

[Jarrett]

The fact that you have a daughter that drives a pickup truck with a manual transmission is awesome.

[GeoffM]

Did you ask Deev for help?

[93accordexcoupe]

Did you ask Deev for help?

nice.


I got sick of bleeding my clutch line all the time due to leaky master/slave/damper/etc. I picked up a steel braided line with a 10mm fitting on one end and a swivel 12mm on the other. Junked the damper and called it a day. Took 2-3 pumps of the pedal to bleed it and its been killer ever since.