njmodi

All,

2002 Accord 4-dr EX-L 4-cyl (obviously 5spd since I have a clutch question).

When the car has been sitting overnight, the clutch pedal is really hard to press and also feels springy/spongy all the way to the floor, rather than having the normal feel of firmness up until the midpoint an then more free movement to the floor.

I have checked the master and slave cylinders and there are no leaks outside or on bell housing nor on the floorpan/under carpet.

The problem goes away after some driving and then returns after the car has been sitting again. So it definitely seems to be related to fluid temperature.

I know it could be the master/slave clutch cylinders, but I'm trying to understand also (as part of having a definitive diagnosis) as to HOW the symptoms I have could be caused by one/both cylinders being bad?

My theory is that when the fluid gets hotter, the seals in the master cylinder are expanding just enough to seal properly and this is why the behavior changes after a bit of driving.

However I still don't understand why the pedal pressure is increasing under cold starts though...if fluid was leaking past the seal, I would expect the pedal to feel soft.

Thanks for any thoughts/theories/discussion/diagnosis.

Cheers.

75aces

Sounds to me it's more the disc. My wife's corolla had similar symptoms.

joec44

I have neaver seen this but I am thinking bad slave cyl I f peadel is hard that tells me fluid can not go anyware How to check I do not know just MHO

njmodi

You mean the clutch disc itself? It happened again this morning. Pedal seemed lower to the floor, a bit of driving and everything's back to normal.

njmodi

Exactly my issue

Yesterday, after the car had been sitting all day, I had someone press the clutch in for me and opened the master cylinder and looked to see if saw any bubbles, or any fluid working it's way back up into the cylinder and didn't notice anything.

I also had them hold the clutch in and watched the slave arm and it protruded as the clutch was pressed and didn't return back (i.e. some leak around seals)...

Since pedal travel seems to be affected (I really only noticed this today for the first time), I think there is some hydraulic issue at play here.