Clutch bleeding tip
 

Yesterday my clutch pedal was getting very soft. The pedal was still disengaging the clutch but it would have left me stranded in the next day as it appeared that the slave cylinder was failing. Since the previous owner said they had replaced the clutch master cylinder, I thought it was a good bet to replace the clutch slave cylinder. The clutch pedal is now firm starting at the very beginning of it's travel. So I know the new slave is working far better than the old slave.

Bleeding the system was way harder and longer than it should have been. The slave is a lot lower than the master, so when I removed the slave, fluid began running out of the line immediately. I just let it run. It eventually drained the clutch master cylinder bone dry. Not helpful. It sucked alot of air into the master. In retrospect, I think having a plug that would fit over the outside of the open clutch line to stop the fluid loss would have helped make the bleeding far easier by not drying out the master. Once the master gets air in it, it's a lot harder to get purged out. I pumped the clutch pedal something like 60 times and had to use an entire bottle of brake fluid to purge all of the air out. That was way too much work.

It did help to have one of those small $8 bottles with a magnet on it attached to the bleed screw so I could keep the bottle higher than the slave cylinder. This keeps fluid in the purge line so that air does not get drawn back into the slave when pumping the pedal. BTW, pumping the pedal means using my hand to lift it off of the floor and pushing it down since the over center spring sucks the pedal to the floor without any pressure in the hydraulic line. Using one of those larger bottle that use a hand vacuum pump would have made things go even faster, but I don't own one.

There is my tip for what it's worth.

Mike