So the MR2 has been having this odd clutch problem. It is not constant. It comes and goes as pleases. It doesn’t slip at all. The wierd thing is, it will lose pressure without losing fluid.
Basically, if you hold the clutch in for more than a few seconds, it loses pressure. There is no leaking, and it is not losing any fluid anywhere. Again, the clutch itself doesn’t slip though under load.
What could this be? And what can I do to remedy it?
Clutch is OEM and only has about 20-30k or so on it.
maybe a rubber line somewhere is old and expands under the pressure, making the clutch lose pressure. a guy on hondatech found this to be the case on his car and made his own steel braided replacement. its a good idea lol
Any other ideas?
Again, it is totally random. it will happen, then it will not only a few minutes later.
if it’s brake fluid in the hydraulic system… could it be too close to something and boiling, losing pressure like that?
hm… wonder if a new master cyl/slave cyl might fix it… or flushing out and putting in new fluid…
any SW20 FAQs on this?
master cyl was replaced about 3-5K ago, possibly fluid, the idea about the old rubber line sounds viable though, some of those lines are old…
btw the main clutch line is also new as of about 5K miles ago, it had a leak when i bought the car.
edit: also maybe someday i’ll get your car out of my sig 
I should just make it mine, hahaha.
The fluid does look a bit browner than usual, and much darker than the brake fluid resevoir. I kind of wondered if that might be affecting things some.
How difficult is it to drain hydro clutch fluid?
well, find where the line threads into the tranny, and let it loose. pump the pedal a few times till all the fluid clears. replace the line, add new fluid, bleed, add more fluid upon need. done.
wonder if it has a bleeder screw, like a hydraulic brake system… lot of cars are like that. i’ve never seen a setup like you’re describing, must be a focus thing
ugh i hate working on cars
^ it is a focus thing. the line threads in right at the top of the tranny, and there is a bleed valve right there. the gayest part of the focus clutch system…
THE BRAKE MASTER CYLINDER AND THE CLUTCH MASTER CYLINDER ARE THE SAME CYLINDER!!! if one leaks, the other is gone too. how gay is that??
whoa…
and i thought that ‘let’s run the (+) and (-) batt cables together’ thing was retarded on those… that’s a new one on me
When I flushed my fluid when i replaced my slave cylinder…I left the new slave cylinder line unhooked from the new slave cylinder, and then I hooked up an air compressor to the hole in the bottom of the resouvior and BLEW the old fluid out of the lines. After I was done blowing, I poured some fresh fluid down into the resouvior, and let some of it drip out onto the ground, then re-fastened it to the slave. Pouring the fluid in with it unhooked kinda chases away any micro bubbles. After retightening the line to the slave, I filled the resouvior and bled the hell out of it, until my hand was numb. I had pressure, but I kept bleeding cause I still had a few bubbles. But now I know that there is NO corrosion or dirt in my lines, since I blew them out with air. Corrosion and dirt is a new slave cylinder’s worst enemy. I spent enough $ on the part, I decided I was going to do it the right way. My clutch pedal is rock hard and very consistant.
Try it out. You’ll be happy.
Justin
Clutch fluid tends to not stay as clean as brake fluid for whatever reason. It should still be fine, though. The procedure for changing clutch fluid is pretty much the same as bleeding brakes.
Alright, this problem had vanished without me doing anything last August, car has run great since then.
Now it’s back and MUCH worse than before. It never was this bad last August when it acted up for a week.
Basically, the clutch will sometimes go to the floor with little to no resistance until the final inch, then randomly a few seconds later, I’ll have a super stiff clutch. It happens when the car is on, when the car is off. There is no pattern to the lack of pedal pressure. The car still drives “fine” (just trouble getting it into first gear or reverse sometimes), the clutch doesn’t slip. I am not losing any fluid anywhere.
And as Jim said earlier, the clutch has around 30-40k on it, the slave and masters have around 5-10k on them, and the main clutch line was replaced.
Again, I am totally at loss at how this came out of completely nowhere. No fluid loss, but the pedal will go from rock solid, to non-existant in the matter of a few seconds later.
Could air in the system cause a problem like this to rise up so quickly out of nowhere even though it hadn’t acted in a similar way in nearly 4 months of driving?
Yes, it could. You probably have a seal in either the master or slave that is going bad, that ‘burps’ in air from time to time.
The color of the fluid is because brake fluid slowly disolves the rubber seals in the master/slave system.
Give it a good bleeding, and see how it goes. If its a hydro clutch, and it works some of the time, most of the time its an air issue.
Alright, I’ll give bleeding a try. I don’t think I can get to it until Friday though as I won’t have a spare hand to help me with it until then.
From another thread (the one with the Stealth and the bad clutch)…
[quote=“JayS,post:13,topic:22026"”]
Bleeding a clutch system is a little more complicated than brakes. First off, never pump the clutch. All you’ll do is get tons of little air bubbles in the system and you’ll never get them out.
Regardless of what other people tell you about how to bleed it, know that I have successfully bled a Fiero hydraulic clutch a FEW times, and like most systems on a Fiero they are notorious for being a huge pain in the ass.
Find some hose that is the right size to slip over the nipple on the bleeder and put it into a catch can with enough brake fluid in it so the other end of the hose is always submerged in brake fluid. If you skip this you’re always going to end up with a little bit of air being drawn back into the slave.
Fill reservior, open bleeder, push in clutch pedal (SLOWLY!), close bleeder, let up clutch pedal. If you can do this alone in an MR you have longer legs and arms than most humans. Do this a few times, fill reservior again since it’s probably very small and if it goes dry you just fucked yourself and have to start all over again.
Repeat step 2 until no air bubbles can be seen coming out of the little contraption you made in step 1. If you’re lucky, all the air is out. If not there may still be a tiny amount trapped inside the slave, or as microbubbles in the line, and you’ll have to do this again in a day or so.
And I’ve never had luck with vacuum bleeders on clutch systems. Nor have many other people on the old Fiero board I went to when I had one, and that was where I found the successful way to do this as described above.
[/quote]
Thanks for the info. Hopefully my friend will be up for helping me out Friday afternoon. I’m going to bribe him with beer. Lol.
replace master and slave cylinder if that doesn’t work. I know on the civic, they are pretty cheap, so just do it to rule it out as a possibility.
im in the same situation right now