Another reason to love this car: Clutch Bleeding
 

Nothing too insightful but I have 35k miles on my car and I noticed that the clutch "felt" different on its stroke. So I thought I would bleed it this weekend.

Here I was expecting to put the car on stands, crawl underneath it etc, when I saw there was no slave, just one MC with the bleeder and its easy to access from under the hood. Had the girlfriend work the pedal and I was all done in 20 minutes with a 8mm wrench, tube with catch can and some off the shelf brake fluid. Just brilliant. I love cars that are easy to work on.

Edit: pedal stroke felt better after the bleed.



Double Edit: I misspoke. The underlined part is incorrect. There is of course a MC and a SC, there would have to be as something would have to be actuating the cylinder bolted to the transmission. The MC is indeed where the reservoir is and the SC is on the tranny. However, usually the MC is larger and the SC is smaller (and hard to get to) but in this case the MC is tiny and the SC is large and it's easy to get to.

You could not ask for a better slave location. Glad it was painless. Now come over and fix my car.

Upgrade the line when u flush ;-)

Debating on this, I have 41k but doesn't seem like it needs a bleed. Is there a way to inspect and check if bleed is needed?

Would you mind posting pics? Sorry, I've come from mustangs. Clutch was opperated by a steel cable that went from the pedal to the clutch fork.

DIY! :thumbsup:

Not unless you like messing with the clutch and checking pressure plate tolerances/distances...

I'm at ~22k miles and can tell it needs a bleed (feels weaker) which I will be doing soon, and when I look at the fluid in the clutch reservoir it's WAY darker than the fluid in the brake reservoir, and they both started off exactly the same. Daily driving you can probably go with 2 years/20'ish k miles between bleeds...but I wouldn't go much past that.

Follow the hydraulic line from the Clutch reservoir to the transmission...literally just a few inches away, right by the intake manifold on the drivers side of the manifold cover. Nipple is ~ 1" away from the banjo bolt connection. Bleed it like you would brakes.

I got picture, see lower RH side of this image I just took (if you look under your hood it will be staring you right in the face...):

http://vracer111.smugmug.com/photos/...-nHDPRz8-L.jpg

It really is right there in front of you. Hah!

I only have ATE Superblue at the moment from bleeding the brakes. Will that be fine for the clutch as well?

yup. same fluid

There is no slave for the clutch?

There's no slave cylinder. Fluid from the master just drips onto the friction material, thus reducing friction. It's actually quite genius.

My clutch pedal is starting to feel a tiny bit different too.. can't explain it, but it's just not quite as "smooth" as it used to be. Might have to try this soon.

I couldn't find any threads on this but if I want to replace the cable for a SS one, how do I do this with respect to the fluid and not damaging anything by running the lines dry?

I initially figured I had to drain the fluid in the reservoir, undo the stock cable, catch the some fluid as it spilled out from below the reservoir, screw in the new cable, and then top off the reservoir and do a flush like one would with brakes. But I'm worried I'm going to be running the clutch dry at some point. Or spilling an ass ton of brake fluid.