Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

Synchros shot? Weird noises while shifting? Not sure what needs to be replaced?
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

Post by Rope-Pusher »

InlinePaul wrote: I hope Trump will fix it.
Me too - he's got to be good at something, right?[/quote]

Well, so far he hasn't gotten much done. Oh, but then he wasn't planning on doing much anyway. He has been busy undoing stuff.

But even if he gets our auto parts to be made in the USA, then we still have all kinds of foreigners here to build them, so will it do any good? Why can't they manage quality control with overseas production?[/quote]
Yanno, I think there are many fine parts (and cars) produced overseas.

It is more work to specify part requirements properly than to just accept the same design that they ship to "Brand X". Maybe Brand X has warranty problems with that part that you don't know about. Maybe Brand X is not a critical customer themselves and has low expectations of the part. Maybe usage in your vehicle places more extreme demands on the part than what usage in Brand X vehicles does.

Wisely chosing the part supplier takes more effort than just awarding the business to the lowest bidder. One point is you need to understand how overloaded the supplier's engineering or manufacturing operations may be. Did the guppy just swallow a whale of a big contract that will require all of their resources to digest? Is the supplier interested in a long-term business relationship, or is this just some extra work to keep their plant busy for now? How experienced is this supplier - do they have a lot of depth with engineering and manufacturing of this type of product, or are they just getting into it and if one or two people leave the company you're screwed? I could go on and on, but it isn't easy to know what the supplier knows unless they are bragging about it to impress you, like "We've been Brand T's main supplier for this item for 20 years now".

Language and distance can make communication difficult. Also, you always need some kind of presence local to their plant in order to understand how they can be assured to produce quality parts and get them to the vehicle assembly plants on time. Someone who understands how the tooling degrades over time and how often it needs to be refreshed or replaced to ensure good parts are still being produced. You need someone who speaks both languages well, who is familiar with manufacturing processes, who can be your man on the ground to perform the initial process reviews, to understand the risks in their supply chains, to swoop in if an issue erupts.

How much attention do you think goes toward Amish transmission system components as the production volumes head downward?
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

Post by ClutchFork »

Many good points there Rope.

Henry Ford tried to run his plant 100% his own parts, making every part and even making the steel with his own ore boat to bring it down from the upper Michigan. But those were simpler days where cars had few parts and no computers, not even radios.

I do think that back when we had metal masters and slaves we were better off. I am pretty sure they still make brake wheel cylinders (some of us still have drum brakes in the rear) out of metal. And it seems even the brake master is metal, albeit a plastic reservoir. Why all the plastic for clutch hydraulics? Because it is more critical to be able to stop that to go?

But plastic can work. My 84 F150 had the original plastic clutch slave and master for all 200,000 miles that I drove it and my boss had it for another 100,000 and never said he had to mess with it. Never even bled it! External slave with clutch fork was a better setup in my opinion. Any time you don't have to pull the tranny is a bonus in my book.

But she is shifting beautifully now and I hope somehow a miracle happens and it stays that way.

I do think Trump means well and is trying to simplify things. Just hope he doesn't get us into WWIII.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

Post by Rope-Pusher »

Yanno, that whole thing about becoming a service economy always sounded fishy tummy. Like I'm gonna clean your pool and you'll repave my tennis court and we'll all be happy and prosperous. Our politicians paid no attention as manufacturing jobs went away and then they wondered why there was no personal income left to tax. The idea that we are better off to let production move to the lowest-cost producers has left us with cheap TVs in every room of the house, but not enough income to pay the cable bills. Maybe if my neighbor still worked making TVs for GE we'd be paying more for them, but he wouldn't be losing his house to the bank, his kids wouldn't be getting free lunches in school and he's be paying taxes again so the tax rates could go down.

The reason that I'm picking on TVs is that there is a lot of information on the dumping that Japanese TV producers did to steal the business away from American TV producers. You can actually see that they were selling at a loss in our market and making it up by gouging the consumers in their own market...but the Japanese consumers only had room for 1 TV in their small houses and they all had jobs, so nobody was complaining over there. Of course, it's all different now and the Koreans and Chinese have stolen the Japanese's cheese. Even the Chinese are losing jobs to Viet Namese. I'm not for being totally isolationist, but at some time you have to look after your own people and our politicians and business leaders haven't been doing much at all of that.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

Post by IMBoring25 »

On the contrary, they've never met a tax, a regulation, or Labor's side of a dispute that they didn't like. We were never going to be competitive with the third world on labor cost but the costs associated with those policies opened up a huge and insurmountable gulf.

In a lot of ways there are a lot more things that seriously need undoing than that seriously need doing. I'm dubious the toothpaste can be put back in the tube at this point, but stopping shooting ourselves in the foot would be a start. Unfortunately, I fear the tariffs and protectionist regulations will be same song, different verse.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

Post by Rope-Pusher »

People respond when money is used to reward positive behavior or to punish negative behavior. To date, I don't think there has been much of an attempt to entice businesses to manufacture locally.

Yanno, there are many items that are produced in overseas sweat-shops that are in high demand and command purchase prices that allow for high profit margins. High-end electronics and sporting equipment (Think of basketball shoes that rhyme with "ordan") are examples where the company is not going to be bankrupted if they started manufacturing their products stateside. Nothing will change here until maybe a boycott applies financial pressure or public opinion embarasses the companies or the athletes that endorse their products.

Mr. Trump and his family can start by cleaning their own houses as an example to others. Seems tummy those "Make America Great Again" caps were imported.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

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Rope-Pusher wrote: Mr. Trump and his family can start by cleaning their own houses as an example to others. Seems tummy those "Make America Great Again" caps were imported.
Yep, hard to get away from it. In the video I posted, Mr. Young wants to save the trees, but I bet he lives in a house build of cut up trees instead of living in a cave. But then he can't live in a cave because there are not enough of them to go around, and bats already live there, so one way or another, man will have to displace one or another aspect of nature just to live.

Back to trade. We have all sorts of regulations that add to cost of domestic manufacture. No wonder companies go overseas. They are all driven by the bottom line. But a major concern would be to ensure quality control, which means a US company outsourcing needs to have on-site presence for quality control. Additionally, we should be making sure that workers are not being abused in the process.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

Post by ClutchFork »

So I am still losing pedal. I contacted the tech support line at LUK (sounds like Luke) clutches, which is supposed to be one of the best companies out there for clutches. I explained the problem and the tech without a second thought and very confidently said that to get all the air out, do this:

pull master out of firewall and hold or tie off in horizontal position somewhere above the elevation of the slave

with bleeder CLOSED, use a pry bar and push the slave all the way in 10 times.


Do this, he said, and my problem will be over. He emphasized that he is totally confident that will fix it. So, going in this Saturday to have the shop give it a try.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

Post by Rope-Pusher »

OK, give it a try. What harm could it do?....but don't give him your D.O.B. or the last 4 of your SSN!
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

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Rope-Pusher wrote:OK, give it a try. What harm could it do?....but don't give him your D.O.B. or the last 4 of your SSN!
Well I guess you are not convinced of this procedure. I wonder though if I did it in the driveway and didn't bother pulling the master. But where would the air go that is forced up the system? Out the seal where the plunger goes in? It can't go back to the reservoir, can it? Isn't there a one way flap valve on that or no? Well if not, then the reservoir port is open when the pedal is all the way up (in theory), so my guess is what point in removing the master and laying it horizontal when the port is already at the top.

What makes sense about this is we are pushing the slave where it would not otherwise go--all the way in. In normal operation it does not do that and while the clutch pressure plate will push it back out, that only goes so far, and that apparently not far enough.

What doesn't make sense is why that should push air out when normal operation does not. The other thing that does not make sense is that it came pre-bled from the factory and gave 1.5 inches of pedal, so where did the air come from that we now have to get out?

I am totally puzzled, but willing to try anything short of giving out my SS number, DOB, or mothers maiden name.

After that I figure I have only two options:

1) Try another brand clutch components.

2) Go to a quarry and push the truck over the edge (first grinding off all id marks from engine frame etc, and pulling the plates or I will end up spending $1000s for fines, cleanup and perhaps jail time. But I would have my moment of satisfaction! :twisted:

Reminds me of a song that could apply to the death of the Ranger if I change a couple of words:


If you are more into power blues, George Thorogood did a fantastic job on same song.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

Post by theholycow »

I too am not convinced, but it's certainly worth a try. Along those lines, I wonder if it would be practical to rig up a feed hose to the slave's bleeder and pump fluid up through the system, flushing any air.

I too wonder how a factory pre-bled complete hydraulic system is getting air. Could the mechanic be doing something wrong? This is when it is time to take matters into your own hands and carefully, time-consumingly do the job with lots of patience and obedience to the manual, with a new pre-bled set (perhaps, indeed, a different brand).

Listened to George Thorogood's cover just now. It's too similar to Cash's performance, IMO. I'm picking up none of his signature power blues sound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLFsmJZlESs


How about a Chuck Berry cover, quite effectively augmented with Thorogood's signature power blues sound?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1i32RiGgwY
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

Post by ClutchFork »

theholycow wrote:I too am not convinced, but it's certainly worth a try. Along those lines, I wonder if it would be practical to rig up a feed hose to the slave's bleeder and pump fluid up through the system, flushing any air.
I have heard of it being done this way.
theholycow wrote:I too wonder how a factory pre-bled complete hydraulic system is getting air. Could the mechanic be doing something wrong? This is when it is time to take matters into your own hands and carefully, time-consumingly do the job with lots of patience and obedience to the manual, with a new pre-bled set (perhaps, indeed, a different brand).
Yeah, that is the real puzzler. Even if the LUK advice works, it probably won't last. Just another bleed method it seems.
theholycow wrote:Listened to George Thorogood's cover just now. It's too similar to Cash's performance, IMO. I'm picking up none of his signature power blues sound.
Yeah, I shoulda given it a listen first. Just assumed it would be typical Thorogood. I just checked on You Tube and it seems nobody wanted to power up that song. Given that, I'll stick with Johnny Cash's cover.
theholycow wrote:How about a Chuck Berry cover, quite effectively augmented with Thorogood's signature power blues sound?
Yep, now that is George all right!
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

Post by Rope-Pusher »

When the clutch pedal is at its upstop position, the port in the master cylinder that leads to the fluid reservoir should be open. As you first start depressing the clutch pedal, the piston in the master cylinder moves past and blocks off this port - this has to happen for pressure to build in the line between the master and slave cylinders. Depending on how far the piston has to move before the port is blocked, it may represent a measureable amount of what is perceived as pedal freeplay until the port is blocked and pressure begins to rise. Even if all the bushings and connections and attachments are lash-free, there is always some motion lost until the port is blocked. The master cylinder is designed to minimize this factor, but if the piston seal swells due to warm temperatures or tolerances in the components place the upstop position of the master cylinder piston too close to blocking off the port, you could have a situation where the port does not become unblocked at the pedal upstop. Then air bubbles could not get out, and as the fluid cools and shrinks slightly it cannot draw in extra fluid from the reservoir to compensate and maybe instead a reduced pressure forms in front of the master cylinder piston and the clutch pedal is drawn down from the upstop position. Maybe then it will be pushing less fluid to reach the downstop and the slave cylinder and release bearing won't be noved far enough to fully release the pressure plate from clamping onto the friction disk.

Any air bubbles in the system should float upward and exit into the reservoir.....if the path along the hydraulic lines was uphill all along the way from slave to master. Sumthymes, there is a horizontal, or even a downhill slope along the way and air does not exit of its own Honda Accord. Detaching the reservoir and repositioning it is prolly an attempt to achieve a continuous uphill slope for the air bubbles to follow up and out of the system.

Moving the slave cylinder to a fully retracted position could force the last little bit of air left inside after bleeding to exit into the hydraulic line and hopefully float up to the reservoir.

I will still stand by performing the bleed procedure as specified by the servants manuel, pumping the clutch pedal around 100 times and rebleeding as a good method of getting out the last little bits of air in the system AND exercising your left leg!

It is possible that the seal at the slave is sealing well under pressure, but is not sealing well in preventing air to be drawn into the system as you lift your foot off the pedal. There is a spring in the slave cylinder that attempts to extend it to keep a preload force between the release bearing and the clutch cover diaphragm spring fingers. If the clutch pedal is allowed to return to the upstop quickly, but the slave is trying to remain somewhat extended, rather than fluid being drawn up the hydraulic line from the slave to the master, it may be less restrictive to suck some air. I have heard that clutch dust got into the hydraulic system on a Corvette after a few drag races. Drag racing would be when the pedal is sidestepped and allowed to return to the upstop position as quickly as it can. (Don't tell the brake engineers, or they will put a stop to sharing a fluid reservoir with the clutch guys.)
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

Post by theholycow »

Rope-Pusher wrote:you could have a situation where the port does not become unblocked at the pedal upstop.
In that situation, it should be impossible to manually push the slave cylinder all the way in...right? Something to note while trying LuK's lucky bleed procedure.
It is possible that the seal at the slave is sealing well under pressure, but is not sealing well in preventing air to be drawn into the system as you lift your foot off the pedal.
...which leads us to this thread's title, "Junk Clutch Hydraulics".
If the clutch pedal is allowed to return to the upstop quickly, but the slave is trying to remain somewhat extended, rather than fluid being drawn up the hydraulic line from the slave to the master, it may be less restrictive to suck some air.
Maybe fill the air with tiresmoke, then watch the smoke around the hydraulic system as an assistant sidesteps the clutch pedal...
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

Post by Rope-Pusher »

Cow,
Yes, if the added pressure coming up from the slave can't push the master cylinder piston back any further and open the port, it's going to resist allowing you to compact the slave to force the air out. We used to have this same problem with cable clutch release systems. Some of them unlock the adjuster every time the pedal came to the upstop position. If there was some obstruction, the adjuster remained locked and you had a fun time trying to attach or detach the cable from the clutch fork because you couldn't pull out any extra cable. That's why DOG invented those humungous Craftsman screwdrivers. Yanno, since the clutch lever position changes as the clutch friction disk wears, it keeps wanting more and more extra cable and it's conceivable that you could run out of adjuster travel such that you had to pry the clutch fork with that screwdriver again just to take the cable off the lever so you could tear it apart to replace the worn clutch.

It would be interesting to fill the system with fresh, clean fluid, do some drag-race rev-it-up-n-dump-the-clutch starts and then flush the fluid again and run it through a coffee filter to see what debris one, or two, might find.

Just about the time we get to making a true science out of this, they'll stop building Amish cars.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

Post by ClutchFork »

Ok, this is pretty weird, but I got the pedal reserve back but not exactly following LuK's procedure because I did not pull the master but just went at the slave with "a humungous Craftsman screwdriver" and pushed the slave back 10 times. Then when I went to the pedal it pushed all the way to the floor with no resistance beyond the pedal return spring. I momentarily freaked, but the next stab at the pedal resulted in it giving resistance at the same point as before and the reserve was practically nil as before. Then I did the push back procedure three more times, two of them with the pedal pushed to the point where the slave was resisted by the diaphram spring and one more with the pedal all the way up. Each time, the pedal went to the floor with only the return spring resistance but the next stroke brought it back. Then I pumped the pedal 50 times and resulted in about 1 inch or reserve and a tad over half an inch of free play. In other words it is perfect now--except that I expect it will lose pedal again. but at least I have gained because I could just do the push back once a week and carry on indefinitely.

Oh, when I put held the pedal to the point of first resistance with the diaphram, then the screwdrive push back met with more resistance than when I left the pedal all the way up.

So after a 4 mile test drive and some wild runs to the rev limiter. I parked it. There was a really bad squeaky noise from the rear when I got out. I looked under the left rear and see the spring bracket and shackle are collapsed and the end of the spring is jammed up near the top of the frame, whereas the right side which has a new bracket last year is near the bottom of the frame. So, it sits outside the shop for a new bracket and shackle.
Last edited by ClutchFork on Wed May 10, 2017 10:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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