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 »

BOOM-Shackelacka?
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

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Rope-Pusher wrote:BOOM-Shackelacka?
Yep, that is what it would become if I drive it any more. That is why I am taking public transportation tomorrow.
And I hate public transportation almost as much as I hate automatic transmissions,
and somewhat more than I hate cauliflower. Image
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theholycow wrote:Why in the world would you even want to be as smooth as an automatic? Might as well just drive an automatic...
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

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So I had Mike at the other shop (not where the work was done) bleed it again. He said there are aluminum particles/shavings in the master cylinder. You can see a lot of tiny bright metallic things in the bottom of the reservoir. He has seen this before, said that the manufacturing debris is not properly cleaned out (attributes to made in Mexico and lack of quality control). Mike said he has seen this before. It happens with genuine parts and more with aftermarket parts. He says that if he installs clutch hydaulics he drains the parts, flushes them, then refills and bleeds them, even though they come pre bled and ready to run from the manufacturer. So, presumably the whole system is polluted with these metal scraps, and so I am in for another complete R&R. The parts are under a 1-year warranty (lot of good a warranty is when the parts are crap), but it will be extra for the flush and bleed, and frankly, the shop that did the original work is not that competent with this stuff, so I would rather have Mike do it. Maybe I should abandon Genuine Ford parts and go with the LUK parts. That company is supposed to be excellent. More costly not getting warranty replacement parts, but better to get it done right.
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theholycow wrote:Why in the world would you even want to be as smooth as an automatic? Might as well just drive an automatic...
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

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InlinePaul wrote:So I had Mike at the other shop (not where the work was done) bleed it again. He said there are aluminum particles/shavings in the master cylinder. You can see a lot of tiny bright metallic things in the bottom of the reservoir. He has seen this before, said that the manufacturing debris is not properly cleaned out (attributes to made in Mexico and lack of quality control). Mike said he has seen this before. It happens with genuine parts and more with aftermarket parts. He says that if he installs clutch hydaulics he drains the parts, flushes them, then refills and bleeds them, even though they come pre bled and ready to run from the manufacturer. So, presumably the whole system is polluted with these metal scraps, and so I am in for another complete R&R. The parts are under a 1-year warranty (lot of good a warranty is when the parts are crap), but it will be extra for the flush and bleed, and frankly, the shop that did the original work is not that competent with this stuff, so I would rather have Mike do it. Maybe I should abandon Genuine Ford parts and go with the LUK parts. That company is supposed to be excellent. More costly not getting warranty replacement parts, but better to get it done right.
Wow, I will say that we don't run into debris inside the plastic hydraulic systems. Also, once they tweak-in the injection molding processes the parts are dimensionally very precise.
So, your system uses its own reservoir (doesn't share with the brake reservoir)? It still seems strange to me that heavy stuph like metallic chips would migrate upstream to the reservoir. Then again, I've heard of salmon, so even the difficult journey can sometimes be the usual trip.
That being said, I would suspect that the debris in your system has mebbe gouged the master and slave cylinder walls and prolly scored the piston seals as well, so R&R sounds like the right action to be taking.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

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Rope-Pusher wrote: Wow, I will say that we don't run into debris inside the plastic hydraulic systems. Also, once they tweak-in the injection molding processes the parts are dimensionally very precise.
So, your system uses its own reservoir (doesn't share with the brake reservoir)? It still seems strange to me that heavy stuph like metallic chips would migrate upstream to the reservoir. Then again, I've heard of salmon, so even the difficult journey can sometimes be the usual trip.
That being said, I would suspect that the debris in your system has mebbe gouged the master and slave cylinder walls and prolly scored the piston seals as well, so R&R sounds like the right action to be taking.
Mike said it has an aluminium cylinder inside the plastic.

Today I called the LUK tech service line about the metal shavings and was told to see if there is any misalignment of the pedal assembly that would make the piston go off center and cause the piston to score the cylinder. That situation already was mentioned in this tread and the shop that originally did the work said the pedal assembly is fine, but I will ask Mike if he checked that.

The other odd thing is I used a screwdriver to pull a larger piece of this metallic stuff (still less than 1/2 mm long) up the reservoir to above the fluid. It was sticking to the reservoir wall, so I tried to extract it with my finger by wiping it off the inside of the reservoir and it seemed to smear, but maybe it embedded. Hard to say, it is so small and my eyes are not what they used to be (fixed focus plastic lenses in both eyes now).

Anyway, something is definitely amiss. And to change just one part will be its doom as the metallic bits are through the whole system.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

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I'd say that it is really difficult to eyeball evaluate if the pedal connector to the master cylinder rod is skewed. On a bench it would be one thing, but down under the instrument panel it is another - you need some sort of jig made up that fits sorta tight to the pin / ballstud on the pedal and has a rod / pointer that aims toward the master cylinder to see if it is off-center left-to-right in the vehicle. Because the pedal pin travels in an arc (with Noah and all the animals), there will always be skewing in the vertical plane. A good pedal design will minimize this - typically somewhere near the midpoint or maybe a little closer to the floor the rod should be pointed perfectly toward the master cylinder. We call this "Splitting the arc" and it limits how far off-center the rod will be when the pedal is full-up or full-down.

You know, this is WAY BEYOND what most technicians get into, right?
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

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I would think it has to be quite a bit off to cause scoring of the cylinder walls. Isn't the clearance pretty tight? So how much can it tilt? Pistons in cars have the thrust at the wrist pin coming from different angles and it does not do this, but slightly over the long, long haul. Of course, the cylinder walls get oiled, but the brake fluid must have some lubricity to it also. I just can't imagine it is off that much.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

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InlinePaul wrote:I would think it has to be quite a bit off to cause scoring of the cylinder walls. Isn't the clearance pretty tight? So how much can it tilt? Pistons in cars have the thrust at the wrist pin coming from different angles and it does not do this, but slightly over the long, long haul. Of course, the cylinder walls get oiled, but the brake fluid must have some lubricity to it also. I just can't imagine it is off that much.
It may be that the piston is not very long and cocks easily...then it would depend on how they couple the rod to the piston. If they allow a lot of swivel it might be better than if it could only swivel a small amount and then started to cock the piston in the bore.

Too bad hydraulic clutch release systems were not plug-n-play. Then you could update it with the latest parts from some vehicle that has a more durable system. It really shudda / cudda been this way - it's not a selling point if they design their own HCRS or buy an off-the-shelf system from a supplier. Kinda like transmissions - if it all works good, do you care who designed it? This is what Sergio Marcioni was getting at when he suggested that there should be an industry-wide 2.0L, and industry-wide 1.6L, and industry-wide 3.0 V-6.....nobody really cares who designed the engine or who built it, just that it performs well and is durable. There is a lot of money tied up in the automobile industry with each company designing, building, testing, etc. their own versions of engines that could be jointly designed, validated, and produced.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

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At this point the pedal seems to be better than previous times. I am not convinced we have metal shavings, or is it some assembly lube that for some reason is shiny? If it goes another week or two with good pedal, then I will be fairly confident that it was mainly a near-impossible-to-bleed system. OTOH I may be replacing it all soon.

Fascinating idea you have of engines being supplied to all manufacturers and having more standardized parts. I liked the different engines back in the good-old-days of muscle cars, but now the cars are so appliance-like that I really don't care about the engines for the most part. Besides, you can't see them buried under a big plastic shield.

Same thing with motorcycles. Back in my day the engines were there in full view. Now they have all this plastic covering everything and they look like toys to me.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

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If you go bAck to the early years of the 20th century, there were many more automobile manufacturers and they tended to build theri own chassis, but the bodies, engines and transmissions were often provided by outside companies. Later, as the industry winnowed down to a smaller number of automobile manufacturers, they started getting more vertically integrated - they bought the companies that had been their suppliers. Each division made their own engines "in-house" and transmissions too typically. Transmissions were the first to move to corporate designs, but it took much longer for engines to be produced on a corporate base ...Chrysler went there first, followed by Ford, but GM kept divion engines the longest. GM got into trouble when they sometimes switched things around, like when they were short on Oldsmobile V-8s and built some Olds vehicles with Chevy engines. After all those years of marketing claiming how much superior the Olds "Rocket V8" was, the owners felt slighted and sued when they found they had Chevy engines in their cars. GM had to pay up.
There are many vehicle being produced with purchased engines and transmissions now. The Cummins Diesel in Ram pick-m-ups is perhaps the most well known and respected case where an automaker chose to go with an "Outhouse" engine. Shirley you may have heard of some trouble that GM/GMC have had making their in-house truck diesel engines? Actually, Ford hasn't had all that much luck when they went with Navistar engines. Prolly why Nissan chose to go with a Cummins Diesel in the Titan.
...but yeah, plug-n-play. Who cares where the hydraulic clutch release system was designed and produced? I'm not saying that the Fiat 500 would use the same system as the Ram truck, but that across the vehicle manufacturers, a family of design would exist and all vehicles of a similar size / engine torque range could use parts of a common design and manufacturing base.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

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I am pleased that we have an automotive historian and much more, here on Standardshift. It is always enlightening to read your informative posts.

Yeah, if I were in the market for a diesel pickup, you bet I would be looking at a Cummins straight 6. Never was fond of bent engines. I used to be a Ford fanatic, but now I couldn't care less. The most important thing is that the vehicle be reliable, but also we need to be sure to have a stick. Who still has pickups with manual transmission? Not Ford, except maybe on special order Superdutys.

Yeah, i would rather drive my beater Ford Ranger with manual transmission, even with the funky hydraulics problem, than a muscle car equipped with an automatic.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

Post by theholycow »

Didn't I read recently of a joint effort between Ford and GM to develop the latest zillion-speed planetary automatic?

...googled it, they did a 6-speed in 2002 and a 10-speed in 2013. Probably more too.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

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InlinePaul wrote:I am pleased that we have an automotive historian and much more, here on Standardshift. It is always enlightening to read your informative posts.

Yeah, if I were in the market for a diesel pickup, you bet I would be looking at a Cummins straight 6. Never was fond of bent engines. I used to be a Ford fanatic, but now I couldn't care less. The most important thing is that the vehicle be reliable, but also we need to be sure to have a stick. Who still has pickups with manual transmission? Not Ford, except maybe on special order Superdutys.

Yeah, i would rather drive my beater Ford Ranger with manual transmission, even with the funky hydraulics problem, than a muscle car equipped with an automatic.
Nope, not Ford. Not even in the medium duty (high end of Super Duty, up to F-750) classes. Neither GM. Cummins Ram is the only full-size game in town. Picked a 2008 up myself late last year because I didn't want to buy a 7.3 for what the market seems to bear for them, I didn't really trust the 6.0 or 6.4, and the 6.7 was never made with the manual.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

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Phunny, but there was a thyme when the Cummins in the Ram pick-m-up had it's highest power and torque ratings with an Amish trans, but in these modern thymes we live in the highest horsepressure and torques are available ONLY with the Aisin 6-speed slushbox....and the time will come soon when the Amish will pack up their buggies and head home, never to be scene again behind the Cummins Diesel.
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Re: Tired of Junk Clutch Hydraulics

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Used to be if someone said they have a six speed it meant a manual six speed, but now the multi-speed-automatic craze is making that term useless as many brag about their six-or-more-speed automatics. My brother-in-law mentioned his kid bought a Focus with a 6-speed, and I thought the kid had his head screwed on straight and had picked up a manual, but no, it turns out he got an automatic. Frankly, I brag about one automatic, the one in our '99 voyager and I brag about its simplicity being a 3-speed with only one electronic feature, the TQ lockup. Still, I would rather have a stick in that thing too. But wife prefers automatic and so it is nice to have a good one anyway.

What kills me is all these guys acting tough with loud mufflers on their huge pickups (yes modern pickups are way bigger than the standard pickup of the 70s or even 90s), showing off with these loud mufflers and it totally gives away the slush shift factor. Or even the slush take off factor (the rev out winding up the torque converter).

I am afraid that one day even motorcycles will have automatic transmission. What happened to the good old Amish kick starter anyway? I can see electric start on a massive overblow bike of 1.4L but on a smaller bike? Where's the fun in pushing a button?
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theholycow wrote:Why in the world would you even want to be as smooth as an automatic? Might as well just drive an automatic...
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