Bizarre G50 Clutch Bleeding Problem - Page 2

buttjoint · 10-26-2005, 03:09 PM

Have you tried my suggestion?

Wavey · 10-27-2005, 08:47 AM

Not yet - dam* client took over my life last night. I'll get back to it later today and let you know. However, I'm not sure if you understand the problem - there is ZERO resistance to pushing the clutch pedal down - I don't believe it's producing any pressure in the line at all.

I would sure love to hear from John Walker or someone else with similar experience on this one.

Wavey · 10-27-2005, 10:08 AM

Just received this PM fro John Walker:

"they can be a pain sometimes. the reservoir needs to be totally topped up as you bleed, so the outlet to the clutch m/cyl doesn't suck air. i generally use a homemade pressure bleeder consisting of a master cylinder cap attached to a 914 washer bottle hose that gets pressure from a tire. clamp the overflow hose tight. i use 25#. attach a 1.5 ft long fuel hose to the bleeder nipple with a 7mm short box wrench behind it and do about a 3 second bleed before checking the reservoir level. keep going until the hose shows no bubbles. the pedal needs to be up when you do this. if that fails, do it by hand. reservoir full, hose on the slave, open bleeder, have someone pump the pedal 3 or 4 times reasonably quickly and hold it down at the last stroke until you close the bleeder, (just like brake bleeding) repeat a few times until you get pedal. jw"

The only difference from what I've done so far (pressure method) is another 10 psi of pressure, which I hadn't tried for fear of blowing the seals.

KTL · 10-27-2005, 10:17 AM

The Bentley says don't exceed 2 bar (29 psi) so don't worry about it. The Bentley's never wrong............

Wavey · 10-27-2005, 10:38 AM

you funny kevin :>

don911 · don911's Garage

I had a similar problem when I did my G50. I pushed a bunch of air into the system because I had the rear jacked way up in order to reach the slave cyl. The reservoir looked like it had plenty of fluid but the angle of the car left no fluid at the back side of the reservoir.
Even when I was getting steady fluid with no air, I think I had to still hand pump up the padal, re-bleed, hand pump, etc until I got a pedal again.
It sounds like you have air in the system and need to pump the pedal and push it out.

Quicksilver · 10-27-2005, 11:48 AM

Just a little note:
If the MC piston is stuck at the bottom of the bore it will seal the reservoir’s port. You wouldn't get any fluid going through the system when pressure bleeding it.

Looking through this I didn't see anything that said that you confirmed that the linkage is moving all the way to the MC. Did you check it?

Oh, the slave has a circlip holding the piston in.

Wavey · 05:06 AM

Got it!

Followed John Walkers advice - filled the reservoir to the brim, pressurized to 25 psi, bled for 3 seconds, checked the reservoir (which wasn't down much). Went through that process 3 times, the final time bleeding for about 10 seconds. Got a perfect pedal back.

The weird thing is that I never got the huge air bubble I expected. There was a bit of air with the first bleed, then a few small bubbles later on, but that was it. Guess that was enough to cause the problem. As little air as there was in the line, I would have expected at least a spongy pedal.

Thanks very much for all the advice, fellow Pelicans.

PS: I used exactly 2 quarts to bleed the entire brake and clutch systems - brakes were totally new so there was no fluid anywhere to start with. About 1 quart of that went to bleeding the clutch system!